Chilling high stakes: No ordinary plot for film inspired by £26.5m bank robbery

It was one of the most notorious crimes in British and Irish history.

The families of two bank executives held hostage for 24 hours, while the officials were forced to raid the headquarters of the Northern Bank in Belfast.

In total, £26.5m was loaded into a van and driven away from the Donegall Square West premises.

Now, inspired by those extraordinary events in December 2004, a gripping crime thriller has been released.

No Ordinary Heist is directed and co-written by Colin McIvor.

Starring Eddie Marsan and Éanna Hardwicke, the film tells the fictional story of two bank employees who find themselves caught in a chilling and high-stakes situation.

London-born Marsan, known for his roles in the biopic of Amy Winehouse, Back To Black and the 2008 film Happy Go Lucky, first read the script when he was on holiday.

"I was fascinated by the opening, the opening first 10 pages, the idea that the bank manager and the security guard were forced to rob their own bank", he told BBC Radio Ulster's Good Morning Ulster programme.

"It was a brilliant script. It was brilliantly paced out. And then when you add the music, the music in the film had such incredible tension," he said.

Cork actor Hardwicke told the same programme he knew scant details about the Northern Bank robbery, before he read the script.

"I knew that was at the time the biggest bank heist in British and Irish history. And then I read Colin's script and met Colin and, I suppose, realised quickly that this was very much based on those events," he said.

"It was inspired by the Northern Bank robbery but I focused and kind of foregrounded the relationship of these two men who were based on the characters, based on the men who were forced to commit this robbery.

"That's what drew me to it."

Hardwicke, who starred in The Sixth Commandment, said he felt it was a wise decision for the writers, McIvor and Aisling Corristine, to focus on the two men at the centre of the robbery, rather than the political events at the time.

The Good Friday Agreement had been signed just five years earlier and the Northern Ireland peace process was in relative infancy.

"The film doesn't sort of dive right into the politics of that or the fall out of that, which would be a very interesting story to tell in its own right," Hardwicke said.

"But I think by doing that you honour the fact that this is very much a Belfast story, that so much of what happened here happened in the context of that city without, I suppose, grappling with the wider political ramifications."

Speaking about the film in 2024, co-writer McIvor said: "For Aisling and I, it was always the human story behind this truly extraordinary, complex and terrifying event that appealed, and the fact it all played out on my doorstep, only added to that cinematic appeal.

"And so, having been inspired, we set out to use this event as the basis for our fictionalised drama".

The plot was filmed in locations in both Belfast and Dublin and Hardwicke said it was "amazing".

"I was so thrilled and excited to be working with Eddie. Lots of the scenes take place in cramped elevators and bank vaults. And it's two men under the most incredible scrutiny and pressure," he said.

"It always felt like the journey that we're going on was constantly changing and the kind of the ticking clock behind them, as Eddie said, added this tension.

"As a film shoot, it was incredibly rich and exciting because it felt like every day there was more being thrown at you."

He said the actors "really got a sense of the jeopardy that these men were under".

"You've got to pull off something that feels kind of impossible and the stakes couldn't be higher because their families were being kept hostage and were kidnapped and were under threat," he said.

Days before Christmas in 2004, gangs of armed men took over the homes of two Northern Bank officials in Belfast and County Down.

With family members held hostage, the officials were instructed to remove cash from the vaults of the then Northern Bank headquarters in Belfast city centre (now Danske Bank).

They were forced to load it into the back of a van - that vehicle contained more than £26.5m in new and used notes.

The van used to carry the money crossed the Irish border hours before the robbery.

It was a robbery that threatened to derail Northern Ireland's fledgling peace process after it was blamed on the IRA.

The IRA said it was not involved in the bank robbery and Sinn Féin leaders said they believed the denial.

Irish government documents released in 2025 revealed UK government officials told their Irish counterparts in January 2005 that they were "given to believe" IRA figure Bobby Storey was responsible.

After the crime, the Northern Bank announced it would withdraw most of its bank notes and re-issue them in a different colour and style.

Some of the stolen notes were later found in Cork.

Chris Ward, of Colinmill, Poleglass, was one of the two bank employees who were forced to assist the robbers while their families were held hostage.

He was arrested in November 2005 on suspicion of being an "inside man" who helped the gang carry out the robbery.

Mr Ward was found not guilty of facilitating the robbery in October 2008.

To date no-one has been convicted of direct involvement in the robbery.

The majority of the money has never been recovered.

The actors stepped onto the red carpet on Thursday night for the Belfast premiere of No Ordinary Heist.

The film had its world premiere at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival in February and is scheduled for a limited run in Belfast.