Recap: Jim Doyle is a mathematician specialized in chaos and fractal theory. He claims that he has developed a program that can predict the fluctuations on the stock market. For Simon O'Reily, a bank executive under pressure to produce more income to the bank that temptation is too much. Boyle is hired and put on a secret project to refine his program. And when the program predicts a major market crash in the near future, O'Reily sees the possibility to earn a fortune. Forget the costs, forget ethics and laws. Profit must be maximized.Comments: How do you make mathematics sexy? Simple, three steps. You put them in a program, add a lot of graphics and visual aid, and then throw in the promise of ridiculous amounts of money. Then you take this to the evil bank, and hey, you got a thriller.Well, the movie is not only about math, even if it looks like it in the beginning? The fundament is humans and one of our sins, greed. To profit on the expense of others. But with greed also comes deception and revenge, so you better look out and stay sharp. The Bank is a movie that profits from these three pretty basic concepts, greed, deception and revenge.It's a movie that starts out simple, but soon something looks amiss, and thereafter very little seems to be what it wants to look like. There are a lot of false façades but for the movies sake, a few too many are a little too transparent. Some twists that should have been surprising are revealed or seen through too early. A lot of suspense and quality are lost this way.Also there are some bits missing. The main plot, with the mathematics, are never fully explained. It can't be, because to explain that math simply would be taking too long and bore most of the audience out of their minds. But to have such a integral part of the plot unexamined the deception becomes very shallow, and less intriguing. In addition there are a little too many points about how Boyle makes his getaway that are left out. The end is therefore not the suspenseful high point of the movie that it should be.A decent movie though, but nothing to look for in the store's shelves. Fun to see Wenham in a different role a little before his role as Faramir in LOTR.5/10

A real tour-de-force from beginning to end. So well-crafted. The cinematography and music both work hand in hand to play a huge part in the triumph of this noir. The editing is sharp, fast paced and so economical. Not a wasted shot. So many fascinating camera angles. All of these components, along with a taut, completely believable script and spot-on acting by all concerned,created a work that captured and mesmerized me for its duration. Anthony Lapaglia does great work with his subtle eyes; the blond lead holds the screen equally. I found the intercutting between the two stories- one big-time, one small-time, to be particularly effective. a true "10"- so rare!!

Maybe this is what goes over Down Under (sorry, couldn't resist), but I found this film to be lacking much sophistication. And it certainly withers next to the last Australian import I saw, the nuanced and terrific "Lantana". "The Bank" is about on par with what you might see on American cable, maybe slightly better acted. It's meant to be a tense thriller about corporate greed vs. the good of society, but the script tackled these themes in such a heavy handed simplistic way I couldn't get interested. No accident, I'm sure, that the "good" guy representing the common man was Aussie, and the "bad" guy who personified unethical corporate excess was an American (played by an Australian, the usually good and occasionally very good Anthony LaPaglia). Sometimes when a film has a dull script, it can be rescued by inspired direction, acting or dialogue. Unfortunately "The Bank" doesn't have any of these, so it ends up being a mediocre movie. It wasn't awful, there are a couple of good lines and a decent twist, but not enough for me to recommend it. If you're hankering for a movie about a math genius, rent Darren Aranofsky's "Pi" instead. It's much better.

Greed is at the core of this film. It's incredible how money can corrupt people to the point that it will make them do things that ultimately, they will live to regret. It was a surprise to see this Australian film that only played a couple of weeks in New York. It's a much better picture than some of the very highly regarded ones that came out just about the same time and are still around, while this one went back to Australia, probably.The director, Robert Connelly presents us with a story that's very plausible. In it, the greedy banker, played with fine assurance by Anthony LaPaglia, wants to be able to get rich with a scheme that is presented to him by the mysterious David Wenham.Aside from some of the technical aspects of the financial world, it is very entertaining and very nicely acted by all the actors in it.