The Banksy Job review – old street art spat makes tedious viewing

This film dredges up an unsurprisingly long-forgotten news story and stretches it out mercilessly to 90 minutes. In March 2004, Banksy’s first sculpture – a version of Rodin’s The Thinker with a traffic cone on his head and retitled The Drinker – was taken from the central London plinth where the street artist had left it and “kidnapped”. In December, more than a decade later, it was returned to the same spot, only now the statue was seated on a toilet and retitled The Stinker.

Sophisticated stuff, barely registering on the scale of art heists given that the work was a) totally unguarded and b) pretty much worthless, both financially and artistically. (Even Banksy himself only offered £2 for its return.) Yet this film approaches this leaden caper as if it’s Vincenzo Peruggiab stealing the Mona Lisa from the Louvre – instead of an amazingly charmless Yorkshireman, styling himself as an “art terrorist” called AK47, pinching the sculpture because he’s upset that Banksy wouldn’t sign a print he bought. The poor love.

Film-makers Ian Roderick Gray and Dylan Harvey seem to think that Andy Link, AK47’s real name, is a charismatic Robin Hood figure, but apart from tediously showing what a lad he is whose MO is “tekkin’ the piss” (despite his rapidly advancing years), he doesn’t say anything amusing, or even interesting, in the course of the whole film. More importantly, his so-called heist was hardly audacious – the statue wasn’t even attached to the plinth – and it was also entirely self-serving. He just stuck it gormlessly in his back garden, vainly hoping that Banksy would pay him a ransom. Whatever you think of Banksy’s work, at least he gives it away to the general public.

The Banksy Job is stuffed with obscure talking heads trying to persuade us that this was a hilarious event of some cultural significance, and it riffs on Banksy’s own film Exit Through the Gift Shop. The elusive artist may or may not make an appearance swathed in a hoodie; my colleague Simon Hattenstone also gets a mention for being a go-between for Banksy and King – and indeed you can read his much more entertaining account of the incident here.

The film might entertain Banksy obsessives, and its elaborate re-creation of the incident and its aftermath surfs fact and fiction in a moderately interesting way. Yet it never convinces us that this story was worth telling – especially with such a repellent character at its centre.