BY BOB STRAUSS >FILM CRITIC

Based on a real, 1970s break-in, "The Bank Job" blends politics, porn and more credible character work than we've seen for some time into the British heist thriller. It's as complex as any Guy Ritchie film, but while funny in places, this one takes its story far more seriously. It's quite satisfying.

Starring Ritchie stalwart Jason Statham, directed by Roger Donaldson ("No Way Out") and written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais ("Across the Universe"), "Job" is primarily a crime procedural with lots of entertaining complications. Statham's Terry Leather, a family man who runs a dodgy used-car business, gathers a group of amateur crooks to tunnel into the safe deposit vault of a London Lloyds Bank branch. He initially thinks it's just a good scheme brought to him by an old flame, Martine (Saffron Burrows), but soon comes to suspect that he and his mates are being played.

Which they are, big time. There's something in one of the safe deposit boxes that high echelons of the British government want retrieved. And there's stuff in other boxes that means a lot to much bigger - and more dangerous - criminals than Terry, Martine and their gang will ever be. Terry doesn't just have to figure out how to do the job, but what its implications are and how he and his friends can survive their aftermath. Shrewd as he is, he may not be successful at that.

Statham gives a solid if unremarkable performance as a thinking working-class bloke, which is a nice change from the cartoonish action heroes he usually plays. The vast cast is rich with fine British supporting players, and there's enough sex and nudity in the film's first 20 minutes to gratify the most prurient interests.

But "The Bank Job's" real pleasures are Donaldson's steady, strain-free, ratcheting up of suspense and expert cross-cutting between numerous story strands. And the plot itself is fascinating, however fictionalized it may be. There's racial militancy, police corruption, royal misbehavior, hypocrisy in all its myriad, amusing forms ...

I don't want to oversell "The Bank Job" as some kind of cinematic revelation, which it certainly is not. There's nothing groundbreaking or particularly spectacular here. But it is a very well done job of its kind, and that's a rare, good thing these days.

Bob Strauss, (818) 713-3670
bob.strauss@dailynews.com

review>

THE BANK JOB

>R: violence, nudity, sex, language.

>Starring: Jason Statham, Saffron Burrows, Richard Lintern, Stephen Campbell Moore.

>Director: Roger Donaldson.

>Running time: 1 hr. 50 min.

>Playing: Citywide.

>In a nutshell: Well-done, meat-and-potatoes English crime caper. Tense, complicated and sexy.