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A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

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.

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

This story is along the lines of 'Runaway Jury'. Old injustices takecenter 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 andbuildings being blown to smithereens. Well acted, some intrigueand the vocabulary was not offensive for the most part. I Highlyrecommend this movie to anyone wanting to be entertained by asolid story line, good acting by a lot of unknowns, to me anyhow. Istill haven't figured out Sibylla Budd's character, very enigmatic. Itwas filmed in Australia and Italy according to the Internet MovieData Base.

It's an open secret: Australian reviewers are dishonest. Perhaps they don't mean to be. But it's as if they conceive their duty to be to "support" Australian films, to persuade people to see them, rather than to tell the truth about them. One result is that they place themselves in the position of the boy who cried wolf: when the rare Australian film comes around that IS worth paying to see, that IS as good as they routinely say Australian films are, that IS worthy of being placed alongside any other of the same kind from overseas - their words carry no weight whatever. I doubt many of us believed the critics who praised "The Bank". Why should we have? But for once they were right.It came from nowhere. I have the vague feeling that writer/director Bob Connolly is famous for something, but I don't know what, and his meagre IMDb filmography is no help (it says he's never directed before). But he's come up with a taut, tense, muscular, beautifully proportioned, INTELLIGENT screenplay (one of its more minor virtues is that the dialogue never lets it down; I particular like the exchange between the protagonist and the woman he's about to have sex with: "Shouldn't we get to know each other first?" "What if we don't like each other?"), and he directs it fleetly, with assurance and an exactly right firmness of touch. It's clear he LOATHES banks. Perhaps this is what makes it work: perhaps the sheer strength of his passion is what gave him the arrogance he needed to be able to stride through the project without setting a foot wrong. NOTHING lets this film down. The musical score is good; the cinematography has that slightly disagreeable sparseness one expects in an Australian film, although in this case it's so apt that it's not disagreeable at all. David Wenham is easy to like yet sufficiently opaque.Perhaps the best compliment I can pay "The Bank" is that the few developments which look, at first, to be the clichéd mistakes that B-grade thrillers routinely make yet which a film otherwise so good can be forgiven for making, turn out to be sources of strength: retrospectively, they're justified, not mistakes at all, sometimes even insights. For example (SPOILER! SPOILER!): aren't grieving parents annoying in films? In the world of movies, once one has lost a child, one can do what one likes - be rude, peevish, immoral, petulant, violent, a walking time bomb - and be forgiven for it. When the father loaded a rifle and went hunting for the managing director of Centrebank, my heart sank. Anthony LaPaglia's corporate character is utterly loathsome, and yet at this point, I was cheering HIM on and hoping that he would somehow defeat or outwit the threatening father with the rifle; it helped that everything he was saying (I couldn't care less about the death of your son, nothing you can do can make me, shooting me will do nobody any good) was in fact both reasonable and true, and the fact that he had the courage to speak the truth at this moment was one of the few things that reflected well on him. And yet, this is precisely what makes the scene work! The film turns out NOT to pat its characters on the head for performing acts of revenge. Bloodlust is NOT rewarded; sober assertions of equality are. Yes, the father got revenge in the end, but the fact that it was revenge turned out to be beside the point - he only got his small reward (and his larger reward of being able to put the matter behind him), when he showed a willingness to forswear revenge altogether, if he couldn't exact revenge in a way that was otherwise justified.And (MORE SPOILERS!) we see that the hero must accept exile - possibly a bitter or empty exile - in exchange for his revenge. (Had he stayed in the country, or got the girl after all, or become a hero in anyone's eyes, it would have struck a false note.) His scam was like the French Revolution. It's what the villains deserved, and it's fun to see them get their comeuppance, but we're not invited to accept that it was, in the end, a good thing.