The Bank

This is an Australian suspense thriller about a mathematician, Jim Doyle, who develops a new theory based on chaos analysis that will enable a user to predict just about anything. A senior banking executive, Simon O'Reilly, gets a hold of the news and hires Jim to work for them, to develop a system that will predict financial markets.

Jim is altruistic - he wants to predict market collapses so that regular people can react in time. Simon sees a way to get rich. Simon is also one of those Gordan Gecko types who sees himself as part of the new feudal lords of capitalism, a member of the elite whose duty he sees as crushing the opposition.

This is a pretty clever film and I want to be careful not to give away the ending. You can sort of see it coming, but the actor playing Jim, David Wenham, is so under control that he doesn't give away a thing. You might recognize Wenham from his role as Faramir, Boromir's brother in the second installment of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. His acting makes this film succeed.

Anthony LaPaglia plays the ruthless banker, Simon, and he manages to make himself hateful for the audience. Sibylla Budd also plays the love interest of Jim very well (she has a deliciously sly smile).

Short on elaborate production values, but the story and the acting make this film exciting and one I'd recommend.

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.

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

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

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.