Heist movie to be shot in Bristol

If you should notice Bernard Hill (pictured above in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers) robbing a Bristol bank with a bunch of elderly chums over the next couple of weeks, don’t be too alarmed. He’ll be filming the codger heist flick Golden Years (formerly known as Grand Theft Ortho). It’s the new movie from local director John Miller, who gave Bond girl Naomie Harris her first film role in the 2002 campus comedy Living in Hope.

Hill, who was recently seen as the Duke of Norfolk in Wolf Hall, stars opposite Virginia McKenna of Born Free fame as law-abiding couple Arthur and Martha Goode, who turn to a life of crime. Here’s the official synopsis: “Arthur (69) isn’t your run-of-the-mill bank-robber. Not unless you were picturing a sexagenarian pensioner with dodgy knees. But when the world pushes him too far, Arthur has no other option than to fight back. It all starts when he sees his friend Charlie (92), a frail WW2 veteran, suffering at the hands of lazy care-home staff, and escalates when he discovers that his pension fund has collapsed in the wake of the Financial Crisis and that many of his friends have suffered the same fate. Facing poverty after five decades of law-abiding, tax-paying citizenship awakens something in Arthur and he makes a bold decision: the financial industry has stolen the hard-earned pensions of him and his friends… so he’s going to steal the money back. Knowing that he’s absolutely the last person either the banks or the police would ever suspect of staging a heist, Arthur now begins a series of robberies, making a success of things as much by luck and raw bravado as by design. And it’s not long before his dutiful wife Martha (69) is in on the act, as much inspired by the thought of ‘robbing from the rich and giving to the poor’ as by the fact that such acts of derring-do have re-ignited her and Arthur’s love life. As Arthur and Martha navigate the splendour of the Cotswolds and beyond in their caravan, robbing banks and building societies as they go and redistributing the proceeds to worthy older folk, the cops come after them…”

Written by Miller, Jeremy Sheldon and TV presenter Nick Knowles, this is a film that’s clearly out to grab some of those grey pounds that are currently being scooped up so successfully by The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. If you’re out and about star spotting, watch out for the impressive British supporting cast: Sue Johnston (Downton Abbey), Alun Armstrong (Braveheart), Simon Callow (Four Weddings and a Funeral), Brad Moore (The Rise), Una Stubbs (Sherlock), Phil Davis (Notes on a Scandal), Ellen Thomas (Teachers) and Mark Williams (Harry Potter). Look out too for Lily Travers, who made her feature debut in Kingsman: The Secret Service. If her name and face seem familiar, that’s probably because she’s Virginia McKenna’s granddaughter.

So where can you expect to see them all? Well, filming is taking place in sets built in The Bottle Yard’s Tank House 2 space. There will also be location shooting at a number of bank buildings surrounding St Nicholas Market, including the former Bank of England on Broad Street, as well as banks on Clare Street and Corn Street. The film’s bowling club scenes are being shot at The Ardagh Sports Club at Horfield Common. Unit bases have been set up at Redcliffe Wharf and Horfield Common. Bristol Film Office has also used social media to recruit more than 100 local people to appear in the film as extras.