Bank of Dave: Neon NZ Review

Cast: Rory Kinnear, Joel Fry, Phoebe Dynevor, Hugh Bonneville
Director: Chris Foggin

About as genial as they come, and with a us v them mentality, Chris Foggin's underdog story Bank of Dave tells the mostly true story of Dave Fishwick (Kinnear) and his fight to create a bank for his local community in the north of England.

A salt of the earth type, Fishwick is the rock of his local community, someone who has lent money to those within his town in the wake of the 2008 GFC and continuing mistrust in the banking sector. But when he decides he wants to start his own bank to shake up the system, a London lawyer Hugh (Fry) is sent up north to help with the cause.

Part culture clash comedy, part feelgood crowdpleaser and part rant against the inequality of the banking sector, Bank of Dave is the kind of broad film that the Brits do often and do reasonably well with. From laughs over not understanding what the Londoners say to a gentle romance, it's fairly predictable what Bank of Dave is going to do and how it's going to achieve it.

In truth, Kinnear's Fishwick is sidelined for a lot of the film, with most of the "action" centring around Fry's lawyer as he deals with his own cynicism and discovers a life outside of London. Kinnear and Fry make for a charming pair when on screen together, and Fry and Dynevor feel like a solid, but undeveloped romantic prospect for viewers to hang their hat on.

Occasionally didactic in its approach (several rants over the banks' behaviour through the years feel shoehorned in) and always formulaic in its filmmaking, Bank of Dave knows exactly what it wants to do with its David and Goliath film and does it with the kind of wide-ranging appeal that doesn't trouble audiences but doesn't last long in the memory after it's finished.