Ah, the British crime movie. I have a weakness for British crime movies. I’m one of the few and proud who saw Layer Cake during its theatrical release stateside, and was thus quite familiar with Daniel Craig’s gifts before he became Bond (speaking of British crime movies). I like the American version of The Italian Job just fine, but I adore the truly cracked original far more. Michael Caine, Noel Coward, Minis, the Fiat factory in Torino, and an ending that defines “cliffhanger”—what’s not to love? Croupier + I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead= Clive Owen nirvana. Sexy Beast is near and dear for the expected reasons—Ray Winstone’s reluctant criminal and Ben Kingsley’s operatically profane psycho—and the less-trumpeted underwater heist orchestrated by Ian McShane. In Bruges is in some ways another version of Sexy Beast, but with contract killers instead of thieves—in Bruges. And The Bank Job is just, well, the icing on the layer cake.

Why all the love? For one thing, location, location, location. It’s the pleasure of watching these guys do their thing in London, Italy, Spain, and even Belgium. There also tend to be choice European cars prettying the picture, be they vintage Jags or those adorable Minis. For another, these films tend to be more in touch with dark, oddball humor, whether it’s of the non-p.c. jokes-about-midgets-and-fat-Americans variety rippling through In Bruges, or The Bank Job’s offhand one-liners about frisky royals and porn kings of Soho. They manage to be outrageous without being moronic and crass, i.e. they expect the audience to be reasonably intelligent. Go figure. And what tends to go hand in glove with the affinity for black comedy is an enjoyably slippery moral universe. The heroes are, literally, villains. Even better, they are allowed to be villains, in that they are not persons of peerless morals who just happened to fall into a bad spot. They are, lawks a mercy me, troubled. I like troubled. It just seems more…human. It also makes those moments when the heroes Do the Right Thing (which isn’t necessarily the legal thing) more effective. Or as Ralph Fiennes’s reptilian In Bruges bad guy Harry tells his wife on his way out the door to settle a score, “It’s a matter of honor—of course it’s going to be dangerous.” There are no pristine white hats here: only grey and black. And some of those heroes look mighty, mighty fine in grey. Oh, yeah, that’s another thing to love: those hard/soft/mordant/loopy/rough/beautiful actors breathing guttural, accented life into those heroes.

Granted, Colin Farrell’s anguished hitman Ray in In Bruges is more puppy dog than hard man. Nevertheless, it’s not that hard to believe that the lovely drug dealer Chloe would succumb to his fumbling advances. Brendan Gleeson’s cultured Ken is akin to Winstone’s retired thief-turned-devoted husband Gal in Beast in that his charms come from the gentle force of his personality rather than traditional good looks (which is not to say that each isn’t attractive in his own way). The best current candidate, though, for assuming the smoldering British Criminal Antihero mantle delineated by Caine in the 1960s, and so briefly worn by Owen and Craig, is The Bank Job’s Jason Statham. Yeah, that guy in Crank and the Transporter movies. And no, I have not been snorting crank.

Given his professional taste for B action movies (yes, there are a second Crank and third Transporter in the pipeline), and his demonstrated physical prowess in those movies (look Ma! No stunt man! —well, maybe a very underemployed stunt man), it would be tempting to dismiss Statham as a Steven Seagal in the making. Having had the dubious pleasure of catching bits of Under Siege and Under Siege 2 while channel-surfing recently, I can confidently assert that this should not be so. Besides the fact that Transporter 2 is just flat-out more entertaining than Seagal’s, um, chef d’oeuvre, there is also the small matter concerning Seagal’s charisma. He has none. When I saw Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels ten years ago at the Edinburgh Film Festival, in contrast, Statham inspired that very rare, “who is that guy??” response. Nor was he lost amid the Hollywood star power of the Italian Job remake. His fleeting, unbilled appearance at the beginning of Collateral makes one wonder if he should have been cast in the Tom Cruise role (then again, maybe I’m just sick to death of glassy-eyed Cruise). Anyway, The Bank Job finally gives Statham something to do besides glower and punch people—although he certainly does that too. As my friend observed afterward, “It’s nice to see Jason Statham smile.”

Statham’s working class bloke Terry Leather is a textbook crime movie reluctant thief who is tapped for a job precisely because he has a shady past, and who takes the job because he wants a sunnier future. His old friend/flame Martine Love puts the cliché on the table when she offers him “the one big score” that will make everything all right. He’s smart enough to know it’s probably too good to be true, and desperate enough to do it anyway. He also has a motivation akin to Gal’s in Beast: domestic bliss. Sure, Saffron Burrows’s Martine is quite tempting after a long night of blasting through concrete to get into that bank vault. But in a movie that’s driven in part by sexual misbehavior, it means something that a) we don’t actually see Leather & Love do it in the vault, and b) Terry opts for fleeing to a new life with Mrs. Leather and their children. Whether he’s bestowing teddy bears on his little girls or taking his wife out for a romantic dinner before he goes off to do crimes, Statham is remarkably natural and at ease in the few scenes involving that family, adding sensitive shades to Terry.

Those layers come through further as the plot unravels. With its complicated schemes, extensive network of dirty secrets hidden in safe deposit boxes, and the class system embedded therein, The Bank Job is more than just a group of dumbly lucky small-time crooks pulling off a heist. Indeed, the after-effects of the heist are simply a more dramatic portrayal of How the Working Class Is Screwed. Before the heist, Terry is struggling to fend off underworld thugs while trying to sell old posh cars to a higher class who pays no attention to his business. All he wants is a good life for his wife and children. After the heist, he is still trying to fend off underworld thugs while making it clear to the higher class of MI5 prigs “who all went to the same school” that they shouldn’t ignore him because he really does have something they want—and it ain’t cars. All he wants, still, is a good life for his wife and children. And for his friends to survive. Once Statham finally gets to let loose and butt some heads, his physicality actually has an emotional edge for that reason. He isn’t Superman (or Jesus). He’s just doing what he feels compelled to do. All of the confidence he puts on when he makes the crucial phone calls to the legal and illegal authorities to put the remaining gang’s escape plan in play humorously dissolves when things go well. Clearly that isn’t the usual state of affairs for Terry.

And therein lies the heart of the hard/soft duality, the nuanced allure of this particular criminal hero. As he knows what it’s like to be played, to be subject to a system where he’s not in power, Terry exhibits a much kinder attitude to the potential femme fatale Martine despite his initial anger at her for roping him and his mates into a heist without knowing all the facts. In another movie, she might have been dispensed with as a nefarious bitch even though she too is a pawn. Not here. She isn’t turned into the enemy or scapegoat. She is a fellow traveler from the old neighborhood who is in the same position as he is, doing in essence what he did when he asked his friends to go along with the scheme. She gets to live. Terry opting for his wife over her isn’t played for punishment or humiliation, nor is she an unwelcome, disruptive presence at the final gathering before they all disperse. Terry’s success and happiness don’t come at the price of Martine’s dignity. That’s pretty damn charming.