This is an accomplished Australian thriller, as taut and well executed as a bank job. It also has an interesting premise about international capitalism.
We have arrived at a world where the major capital flows are channeled through deliberately volatile global stock exchanges. Hence those familiar images of hyped-up young men shouting and waving on the trading floors.
Banks seem to have put profit above service and have lost their homely image. Nowadays they are as likely to conjure up the image of a suicided farmer mired in rural depression and lack of finance as a smiling face.
Enter David Wenham a mathematician of near genius levels who devises a system that can mirror the stock market trades in real time and even predict the next crash. Naturally, when he presents this package to the ruthless CEO of 'Centrebank" (Anthony Lapaglia lending his gangsterish gravitas), resources are soon found to set up a secret operations room for him.
There’s something about Wenham (surely the most gifted Aussie actor yet to conquer Hollywood). He has the steely determination (his astonishing turn in The Boys), but there’s a sensitivity around the eyes too.
Just as things are going the bank’s way, Wenham falls for a shapely teller (Sibylla Budd) who is disgusted by all these ruthless yuppies. She is concerned that Wenham has lost his perspective. However, a neat and satisfying twist suggests otherwise.
The Bank is slightly one note. A little too much of the film takes place in cold empty-looking boardrooms and glassed-in computer labs (although Melbourne is well tricked out for the exteriors). Also, the computer wizardry reduces to a mcguffin in the end. However, it is cleanly and confidently directed by first timer Robert Connolly and the leads are always watchable and, in some scenes, superb.
Filmink 3.5/5
