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

i'd been wanting to see this for a long time, ever since i heard wenham was going to be a chief protagonist (one of my favourite actors). his performance in "the boys" is still up in my top 10.

well, "the bank" was everything i expected and more. all the cast gave top-notch performances, and the believability of the subject remained pretty intact the whole way i thought. anthony lapaglia was great (as usual), although i would of preferred it if he played an australian. i just thought it would of added a bit more intensity. the guy who played wayne davis was also good, especially in the stand-off scene.

after being disappointed with a lot of recent australian films ("risk", "mullet"), this was a refreshing delight. i highly reccommend the dvd as well, as robert connolly's commentary is excellent and one of the best i've heard. i look forward to seeing with what he comes up with next

9/10

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.

A large corporate bank takes on a young Mathematics PHD boffin who insists that with funds he can fully develop a theory that predicts the movements of the stock market.

Not a bad watch at all, fine acting, a pretty good story and nice cinematography bring together a thoroughly credible piece.

The bank here is the archetypal 'unelected private tyranny' that exist in our times, where they can bully governments, cross borders and refute any kind of ethical principles in the name of greed and profit.

The head of the evil organisation is played very well by Anthony LaPaglia who is utterly convincing and puts in the best performance of the film. In addition, the lead David Wenham is also fairly good and his beautiful love interest Sibylla Budd is not bad either.

I quite enjoyed this movie, each scene looked like a lot of effort had been put into setting it up and directing the actors. The overall feel of the film was very effective for the subject matter but it was missing something that would make it truly memorable and a great film. The ending was not bad but overall the film was just not substantial enough

Worth a watch