No Ordinary Heist

Set against a backdrop of a busy Christmas and impending, pretty savage, redundancies from it’s Australian parent company, Northern Bank manager “Murray” (Eddie Marsan) is also facing discord at home from a wife (Eva Birthistle) who has had enough of him always being at, or obsessed with, work. Meantime, “Barry” (Éanna Hardwicke) is a jovial worker at the bank who regularly wanders around with the vault keys in his hands as he chats with his pals. The two men don’t exactly get on, but they are going to have to learn to work together when terrorists arrive at their respective homes and take the manager’s wife and the younger man’s asthmatic mother hostage. Co-operate with an audacious robbery of tens of millions of pounds or else! Both men are determined that no harm shall come to their families, but “Murray” isn’t entirely convinced that “Barry” isn’t involved - they already have a deep-rooted past with the troubles that does nothing to engender any sense of trust between them. What also isn’t going to help is the eagle-eyed security chief “Mags” (Michelle Fairley) whom they know they are going to have to hoodwink if they are to move such a substantial amount of paper through the building’s comprehensive CCTV network without being discovered. It’s based on an actual event so we know what happens at the end, but that lack of jeopardy doesn’t really impact negatively as both Marsan and Hardwicke imbue their characters with quite palpable senses of fear and mistrust whilst director Colin McIvor keeps the pace taut and comparatively simple. There is menace here, but the use of the erratically functional telephones keeps the perpetrators at an effective arms-length so there is no need for violence - this is a terror of an altogether more psychological nature, and though it probably doesn’t need a cinema screening, it’s certainly worth a watch.