Dick Clement and Ian Le Frenais, the writing partnership behind The Likely Lads, Porridge and Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, penned The Bank Job, a dramatisation of true-life crime on the streets of 1971 London. The film pilfers all of the essential ingredients for a heist movie: dodgy geezers, unexpected glitches in the master plan, a close call with the Rozzers, and some earthy dialogue ("It may be smart to go and stay with your aunt in case things turn to custard.") Unfortunately, Roger Donaldson's thriller tunnels through familiar ground and the film is severely handicapped by a lifeless leading man with all the charisma of a crowbar. Shady car dealer Terry Leather (Jason Statham) thinks he has hit the jackpot when beautiful model Martine (Saffron Burrows) invites him to take part in a robbery, targeting the safety deposit boxes in the vault of Lloyd's Bank on the corner of Baker Street and Marylebone Road.

The plan is simple: dig a 40ft tunnel down into the basement of a leather goods shop Le Sac, underneath the Chicken Inn restaurant, and up through 3ft of reinforced concrete into the vault. Terry assembles his crew - Bambas (Alki David), Dave (Daniel Mays), Eddie (Michael Jibson), Kevin (Stephen Campbell Moore) and The Major (James Faulkner) - who are understandably concerned about the risks. "Terry, don't you think this is a little out of your league?" asks one of the team. "Maybe it's time we stepped up to the first division," he replies coolly.

With Eddie as lookout, Terry and co break into the vault and raid the security boxes, unaware that one box contains compromising photographs of a member of the Royal Family. They are also oblivious to an amateur radio enthusiast, living a few miles away, who has inadvertently picked up their walkie-talkie communications and alerted the police to the robbery.

The thieves escape by the skin of their pearly whites and Terry looks forward to a rosy future with his wife Wendy (Keeley Hawes) and family. But when details of the daring theft hits the news-stands, Terry and his associates face the wrath of two of the bank's influential customers: corrupt businessman Lew Vogel (David Suchet) and con man Michael X (Peter De Jersey), who want their property returned, immediately.

The Bank Job is a fascinating story of government corruption, cover-ups and criminal daring but Donaldson's film fails to capture the excitement of what was Britain's biggest-ever robbery. Statham has one emotion throughout - nonplussed - and his static performance wrecks the film's most emotional scene when he has to beg wife Wendy for forgiveness for succumbing to Martine's charms. His co-stars bring colour to their underwritten roles, while Suchet hams it up as an East End porn mogul whose defining characteristic is his poor health. Retro fashions and haircuts, capturing the spirit of the 1970s, are just as unintentionally hilarious as some of Clement and Le Frenais's dialogue.

Our entire lives are stored online. Names, addresses, bank details, medical records: all easily accessible with a few taps of a computer keyboard. Greater freedom of information has given birth to the virtual criminal; menaces to society from credit card fraudsters to devious sexual predators who lurk in chat-rooms.

Untraceable is a disturbing thriller about a technical genius who uses the internet to torture his victims, and the specialist team charged with tracking down this mastermind before more blood is spilt. Director Gregory Hoblit (Primal Fear, Fracture) is well suited to the material, gradually tightening the narrative screws to keep us on the edge of our seats. He sustains our interest despite lapses in logic and occasional stupidity on the part of the characters required to drive the plot to its life or death finale.

Single mother Jennifer Marsh (Diane Lane) is a seasoned FBI agent in the Portland office's cybercrime division, waging war against hackers, fraudsters and paedophiles with her partner, Griffin Dowd (Colin Hanks). An anonymous tip-off leads Jennifer to killwithme.com and a live feed of the slow and painful death of a kitten. Her boss (Peter Lewis) isn't interested until the site reappears a week later, this time with a live stream of a restrained man bleeding to death. As the number of people viewing the site increases, more anticoagulant drip-feeds into his system, intensifying the suffering . . . Determined to stop the killer, Jennifer and Griffin join forces with Detective Eric Box (Billy Burke) before another victim suffers a similarly grisly fate.

Untraceable builds on a simple premise to deliver an entertaining thrill ride punctuated by decent set pieces including a horrific acid bath and a nerve-racking encounter on a rain-swept bridge.

Hoblit ensures the pace doesn't slacken, distracting us from dwelling on plot holes and glaring coincidences like the killer also being located in Portland or his ability to manoeuvre victims unaided into the fiendish death traps.

The screenwriters thankfully resist the urge for a final reel twist, preferring to drive their ghoulish story to its inevitable conclusion, clearly signposting any important details that will prove vital, such as a comment about blinking.

Lane slips effortlessly into the slacks of her ballsy mom, who is torn between the responsibilities of parenthood and the pressures of her job.

A possible romantic subplot with Burke's cop is sidestepped while Hanks provides sporadic comic relief as the techno geek with a disastrous love life.

Cross is creepy as the architect of all this carnage, even though his character is starved of a compelling back story, with solid support from Mary Beth Hurt and youngster Perla Haney-Jardine as Jennifer's imperilled family.

Cinematography is suitably gloomy and the various torture sequences horrific, especially since Hoblit shares the same fascination as the killer, focusing in close-up on the victims in their death throes.