Read More @HJ Previews: Overview, Trailer, Photos David Bruce, Webmaster

In general, a heist movie revolves around three things—the genius of the scheme, the unique characters often required to pull off that genius, and a fairly clear-cut reason for the heist at hand. If the thieves are running the game themselves, their primary motive is usually greed or revenge. If someone else is running them, the purpose is almost always manipulation of the individual or institution being robbed. And in the end, the prize at the center of the movie is either the beauty of a job well done, the sweetness of the punishment inflicted upon the target of the robbery, or both.

But this spring, the heist film gets a reminder that in a world where underhandedness is rarely a solo operation and manipulation is the rule rather than the exception—when secrets lie hidden amongst stacks of bills, and the bills belong to hundreds of different people—suddenly the most interesting part of a heist is not the theft or the thieves themselves, but rather how far people will go to keep secrets hidden and how much power can be gained by simply holding someone else's secret in your hands.

When The Bank Job begins, the set-up is simple. Terry (Jason Statham), a small-time thief and family man, owes money. When his former flame Martine (Saffron Burrows) tells him about a bank that is pretty just much asking to be robbed, the opportunity is too much to pass up. And so, Terry recruits a team and begins preparing for the job. With nothing much more sophisticated than a few shovels and some brute force, they get in, they get what they're after, and they get out. But what they don't know is that in their bags of loot they carry just as many secrets as they do bills. And let's just say the people who own those secrets are not exactly thrilled about their escape from hiding.

You see, instead of just robbing the bank's vault, Terry and his team steal from the bank's safety deposit boxes. And as anyone who has watched enough movies about informers, undercover journalists, or covert assassins knows, there are some things in safety deposit boxes that certain people might not want to have floating around.

As you might guess, with somewhat of a femme fatale behind the scheme's idea to begin with, the plan was never quite as simple as it appeared. But even to those looking for a bit more out of the robbery than Terry and his gang are first aware, the number of secrets that spill out of the safety deposit boxes and disrupt both the criminal underworld and political and legal upper class is surprising.

Without giving too much away, let's just say that clients of the bank Terry and his gang rob include the porn king of London, the city's most well known Madam, and a political activist to whom charges won't stick. And when it comes to the items that pour out the boxes and into the thieves' bags, half of the police force, a number government officials, and even the royal family are thrown into the mix as well.

For many, the safety deposit boxes were the hiding places for their very own dark deeds and indiscretions. For some, the boxes obediently held the secrets of others on the off chance that they might some day come in handy. And for a few, the boxes were protecting information already being used to grease wheels all around town.

But the problem becomes, when all of the secrets are thrown into one bag and taken from their already precariously balance, the ugly power inside them all explodes all over the place. And unfortunately for Terry and his gang, they are stuck smack dab in the middle.

You see, the trouble with secrets is that they carry a power unlike anything else. Their grip on us begins because we cannot see their exposure as anything other than our ruin. Their strength continues to grow because those around us never stop reminding us of every single thing that could easily lead to that ruin. If our secrets happen to fall in the hands of anyone else, our desire to keep them from getting out any further only feeds their power even more. And if our secrets happen to spill out into the open? Well, as long we continue to see them as the key to our ultimate destruction, the very muscle we have given them ourselves will pretty much strangle us alive.

The thing about secrets is that by holding them close we are actually the ones who give them their power. By refusing to let them go, we waste our energy on the very things that are already dragging us down and simply allow them to drag us down further. But the good news is that secrets don't have to have that power. You see with God, there are no secrets. He knows everything we try hide, yet he does not reject us. He knows every thought that brings us shame, yet he is not ashamed to be in our presence. The simple truth is that to release ourselves from the hold our secrets have on us, all we have to do is to realize the negative power they have over us, recognize our need to be free of them, and hand them over to God. And unlike so many characters in The Bank Job who only see secrets as ways to trap others, God promises that if we put our secrets in his hands, he will grant us freedom.