They Was Robbed!

[klondike]

Just watching a rental of the Jason Statham actioner The Bank Job.
Now, I knew it was a 2008 spin on the classic covert-heist plot, but . .
I didn't realize that the heister's scheme involved tunneling into the bank's vault from the basement of a neighboring luggage store!

Now, where have we all seen THAT plot device before, just recently?
On TCM, maybe?
Somebody call Eddy G & Tony the Q; looks to me like the biggest crime going on here is theft from a classic script!

[movieman1957]

Did they credit it? I heard somebody sued Spielberg over "Disturbia." Can this be far behind for them?

[moira finnie]

Since the original script of Larceny, Inc. (1942) was purchased from the husband and wife team of humorist and sometime Hollywood screenwriters S.J. & Laura Perelman after years of their attempts to market it to the studios, (Mr. Perelman lamented the unmarketability of the story several times in his collected letters), perhaps there is laughter in heaven to find this plot so durable to this day. Most of the time, when Warner Brothers bought the rights to a story in the bustling studio era, they belonged to that studio for good--no longer to the creators.

So, I guess the Perelmans' descendants probably don't have much of a case, though there may be a loophole, or so the boys at Dewey, Cheatum, and Howe will be happy to tell them.

Btw, Small Time Crooks (2000), a mildly entertaining Woody Allen movie, used some very similar plot elements as well. I noticed that The Bank Job is said to be based on a real life case. Could be life is imitating art?

[stuart.uk]

I was thinking recently about the simalarites, if any, in Edward G Robinson's Brother Orchid and Harrison Ford's Witness, where two cops hide out in a religous community

[bryce]

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this is actually how the Bank Job happened. Most English - let alone most Americans - don't even know about this crime, thanks to a wonderful government D-Notice. But, no rip off here, this is actually how it happened. Sometimes truth mimics fiction... and then fiction comes full circle to mimic truth, which was still too busy being a cheap knock-off of fiction to notice. Boy, you work that one out, I'm spent.