The Bank

It's an odd thing that in an age when money is God, banks are regarded as the embodiment of evil. Everyone hates banks, and its easy to get an audience on-side to a bit of bank-bashing. We derive guilty pleasure from seeing a bank get its come-uppance; pleasure, because we resent the humiliation they routinely dish out to us as their customers, as well as the charges, foreclosures and cartel-like behaviour they indulge in at our expense. Guilt, because we too subscribe to dreams of wealth and power, it's just that most of us are not ruthless and callous enough to realise them.

This is a simple, straightforward, well produced thriller with a strong script and some good performances from the main players. The story concerns a maths wiz from country Victoria (David Wenham) who with the aid of chaos theory has developed a program to predict financial market trading. The CEO of Centabank (Anthony La Paglia), pressured by his board for more profits, hires him in Melbourne to perfect the program fro the benefit of the bank. Early results are promising, but our wiz seems to have an agenda of his own. Meanwhile, a failed houseboat operator and his wife are seeking redress against the bank in respect of a dodgy foreign currency loan they were conned into.

Part of the plot is similar to `The Farm', with Colin Friels and Greta Scacchi, recently shown on ABC TV (Australia). Here though we have the extra dimension of the financial market thriller, presented in an understandable way. Techicalities are avoided – all you have to do is watch the graph to see what is going on. The supporting characters are not particularly remarkable but the two leads Wenham and La Piaglia are well defined and well balanced. If the script had not been so good La Piaglia could have been a caricature, but he is instead quite believable, though I'm not sure deriding a gunman for his personal weaknesses is always an effective way of persuading him to put the gun down. David Wenham is good at slightly enigmatic characters (Diver Dan in `Seachange', the boss boy in `The Boys' (also directed by Robert Connolly, the director here) and he gives his character here the required amount of mystery. His love interest (Sybilla Budd) who he meets at work, seems a bit incidental – she's not exactly superfluous but isn't really in on the plot until late in the movie, and in the end, well

It's obvious that the screenwriter/director doesn't much like banks - and not many people do. You're only likely to get friendly attention from them when you have large sums of money to deposit, otherwise you are regarded as one the pests they have to put up with to get enough of the aforementioned type of customer - and they take sizeable fees from you for the privilege. The screenplay here is at its best when fuelling that perception, particularly by the attitudes of the bank's CEO, here portrayed (unnecessarily) as an American being pressured by the bank's directors to make higher profits (having closed most of the branches to achieve that wasn't enough). The guy is greed-driven and doesn't care about people. We get two cases of people's lives being ruined by the bank's loan foreclosures. So far so good. But some things don't quite square with reality - the mentality of bankers generally is not suited to gambling and a CEO isn't likely to test a mathematics whizzkid's theories with real money right at the start. It's improbable that a bank's board would agree to a gamble involving the bank's entire capital. Could the mathematics whizzkid really hide a previous identity so easily, and his real motivation as revealed at the end doesn't go with the ethical disinterest he shows throughout. But the film is very good on a technical level - the science presented (generally) suspends disbelief superbly, the characters are credible, acting passable and the editing is excellent. My acid test of a good film is whether it holds my attention throughout and this film certainly does that. 8 out of 10.

This story is along the lines of 'Runaway Jury'. Old injustices take

center stage in the mind of the involved and revenge is the goal.

Well done movie. A refreshing change from the 'shoot'em up'

endless car chases and bullets flying everywhere fare and

buildings being blown to smithereens. Well acted, some intrigue

and the vocabulary was not offensive for the most part. I Highly

recommend this movie to anyone wanting to be entertained by a

solid story line, good acting by a lot of unknowns, to me anyhow. I

still haven't figured out Sibylla Budd's character, very enigmatic. It

was filmed in Australia and Italy according to the Internet Movie

Data Base.

The quality of films coming out of Australia always amazes me considering the size of their budgets compared to run-of-the-mill "blockbusters" that Hollywood lavishes millions on.

OK, you have to suspend belief a bit to accept that the caper that is the plot of "The Bank" could actually be pulled off -- or could it? But what the hell, if you watch Hollywood films you suspended your belief a long time ago.

This film is a great example of Less is more. No car chases, nobody gets murdered, hardly any sex. All it has is good writing, good dialog, excellent acting, imaginative filming and special effects and music.

And Anthony Lapaglia is just one of the finest actors around these days. Altogether an enjoyable film.

Another film about corporate power and greed, "The Bank" puts a slightly different spin on the subject. Set in Melbourne, a young Ph.D. mathematician named Jim Doyle (David Wenham) uses fractal theory, similar to chaos theory, to predict changes in stock markets. A ruthless, unethical CEO named Simon O'Reilly (Anthony LaPaglia) hires Doyle to employ his equations to benefit Simon's bank which, in a separate development, tries to swindle a working class couple out of their belongings. "The Bank", obviously, does not portray financial institutions favorably.

The tone here is cold and technical, with dialogue that includes lots of techno-babble. And there are some potent lines, like when Simon spews out his politics to Jim's girlfriend. "We (the banks) can react against any government until they do exactly what it is we want them to do ... We have now entered the age of corporate feudalism ..."; the girlfriend responds angrily: "What do you call yourselves, bastards without borders?"

Indeed, the story takes Oliver Stone's "Wall Street" a step further. Whereas Gordon Gekko's mantra was personal greed, Simon's goal is nothing less than global domination, a world run by ruthless banking executives.

The film's plot is not altogether clear when first viewed, as a result of flashbacks. And some plot points are left unexplained, perhaps intentionally. Also, I must say that the story, in its totality, is somewhat implausible. But there's plenty of tension as we approach the climax, partly as a result of the film's splendid graphics.

And those graphics, in the form of line schematics, are the portal from which we descend into fractal theory, a veritable black hole for some of the characters. A couple of subtle references to Hal9000 solidify a black box future, amplified by color cinematography that is dark and menacing.

We've seen this overall concept before, in other films. It's hardly original. And the characters are not really sympathetic. Still, "The Bank" is technically well made. For most viewers, Simon's motivations are chilling. They remind us of what can happen when big, powerful institutions are given unlimited control.