The Bank (2001)

User Rating:

6.7/10   

Director:

Robert Connolly

Writers:

Mike Betar (original idea)
Robert Connolly (screenplay)

Release Date:

6 September 2001 (Australia)

Genre:

Thriller | Drama

Tagline:

Public enemy number one: The Bank

Plot:

The Bank is a thriller about banking, corruption and alchemy. |

Plot Keywords:

Bank | Public Enemy Number One | Mathematics | Public Phone | Perjury

Awards:

9 wins & 21 nominations

Cast

David Wenham	...	Jim Doyle
Anthony LaPaglia	...	Simon O'Reily
Sibylla Budd	...	Michelle Roberts
Steve Rodgers	...	Wayne Davis
Mitchell Butel	...	Stephen
Mandy McElhinney	...	Diane Davis
Greg Stone	...	Vincent
Kazuhiro Muroyama	...	Toshio
Andrew Bayly	...	Mr. Johnson
Thomas Blackburne	...	Young Jim
Sharon Oppy	...	Teacher
Robert van Mackelenberg	...	Chairman
Jeff Keogh	...	Christopher
Matt Norman	...	Limo Driver
Joshua Jay	...	Roger

Also Known As:

The bank - Il nemico pubblico n. 1 (Italy)

Runtime:

104 min

Country:

Australia | Italy

Language:

English | Japanese

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

Finland:K-11 | South Korea:12 | Argentina:13 | Australia:M | Germany:12 | Canada:14A (Ontario)

Filming Locations:

Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Company:

Arenafilm

Trivia:

Some scenes were actually shot on the uppers floors of a major bank's corporate headquarters in Melbourne.

Goofs:

Continuity: Near the beginning when Toshio is sending a fax he places the pages in the machine face up, yet as the page moves through the machine we can see the logo which clearly shows this machine expects pages to be placed face down. The fax is later shown being read by Simon and has been correctly received.

Quotes:

[Explaining to the bank's board why he wants to protect the shareholders]
Simon: They are our people. They are our "society". The public can take care of themselves.

Movie Connections:

References Koyaanisqatsi (1982)

Technically superb, but some credibility problems

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.