'Bank Job' scores as a great heist pic

"The Bank Job" (two-disc special edition) - I love heist films, and "The Bank Job" is a doozy: smart, funny and suspenseful. Veteran director Roger Donaldson tells a complicated story - the action moves from the gritty streets of east London to the highest levels of the British government - with stripped-down panache. Add some pitch-perfect performances by a sparkling collection of British actors, and you have one of the most entertaining caper flicks in some time.

"The Bank Job" is loosely based on the infamous real-life robbery of a Lloyd's Bank in London in 1971, though screenwriters Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais have added a great deal of fiction to the facts. In the film, likable low-level grifter Terry Leather (Jason Statham) and his gang learn about an enticing bank score from Martine (Saffron Burrows), a beautiful ex-model who used to pal around with the gang. Martine tells them the robbery would set them all up for life. Eager to provide a better life to his wife and two girls, Terry agrees.

What Martine didn't tell Terry is that she's being forced to arrange the robbery by an oily British intelligence officer who helped her escape a drug arrest. A safety deposit box inside the bank's vault contains photographs that could be very embarrassing for Britain's Royal Family, and intelligence officials want Martine to retrieve them during the robbery.

But wait, that's not all. Unbeknown to all of them, the vault is also where Lew Vogel (David Suchet, channeling Michael Caine), a London pornographer, keeps his most precious possessions, including a ledger that spells out all the payoffs he makes to the corrupt local cops.

Since caper movies live or die by their capers, I won't reveal much about it, except to say that Terry and his gang find themselves pursued by the police, British intelligence officers and Vogel's thugs.

"The Bank Job" is in many ways a throwback to the crime films of the 1970s: gritty, violent and character-driven. I liked how Donaldson uses the caper to expose the "layer cake" of class tensions in England. I also liked the performances, particularly those by Statham, who shows that he's more than a cartoonish action star, and Suchet. The two-disc DVD comes with a commentary, a decent making-of featurette and a look at the actual 1971 robbery. (R; Lionsgate, $34.98)

"21" (two-disc special edition) - "21" is based on a true story about MIT students who used their card-counting skills to score millions from Vegas casinos. But instead of sticking closely to the story, first told in a best-selling book by Ben Mezrich, the makers of "21" graft it to a by-the-numbers melodrama about a gifted but poor MIT student (Jim Sturgess) who joins a secret card-counting club and nearly loses his soul when the team starts hitting the casinos. Sturgess, so good in "Across the Universe," is OK here, and Kevin Spacey and Laurence Fishburne do what they can with generic roles. There's a great movie to be made from this material, but "21" isn't it. The two-disc DVD comes with a solid set of bonus features, including a commentary and a look at the history of blackjack. (PG-13; Sony, $34.95)

"Comedy Central's TV Funhouse" - Here are all eight episodes of the raunchy, uneven but frequently hilarious comedy show from 2000 co-created by "Saturday Night Live" writer Robert Smigel. "TV Funhouse" is set up like an old Saturday-morning kids' show, complete with a blandly cheerful host, a group of animal puppets called the "Anipals" and short cartoons. The Anipals abandon the show's host each episode and go off on their own adventures, which usually involve the quest for sex, leaving the host with nothing to do but introduce the cartoons. The Anipals are hit or miss - their best moments come with guest-star Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog - but the cartoons are consistently funny. The highlight for me was "Stedman," in which Oprah's boyfriend pretends he's a secret agent to avoid sleeping with her. This nice two-disc set is loaded with bonus features, including commentaries and outtakes. (For adults; Paramount, $26.99)