The Bank

Enthralling both as a thriller and as a caustic portrait of corporate greed, this superb debut from writer/director Robert Connolly delivers a crowd-pleasing comeuppance to an institution that people love to hate - the bank. David Wenham plays a brilliant Australian mathematician who is close to perfecting a computer programme that will be able to predict major stock market ups and downs. He sees it as a way to protect millions of ordinary folk from losing their savings: his employer (Anthony LaPaglia), the head of a big Australian bank, has other ideas. Just in case there is any confusion about where Connolly's sympathies lie, the central storyline is juxtaposed with a moving subplot about a couple whose young son has killed himself rather than pass on a foreclosure notice handed to him by a bailsman working for LaPaglia's bank. Wenham is superb as a man coping with the conflict between his moral code and a desire to leave his mark on the world of mathematics, while LaPaglia offers up the most monstrous business executive since Michael Douglas's Gordon Gecko in Wall Street.