BANK OF DAVE - Mark Reviews Movies

Bank of Dave, Samuel Goldwyn Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 24, 2023

Bank of Dave wants to put us in both a fighting and a feel-good spirit, but by the end of this dramatization of a true-life story, director Chris Foggin makes a significant miscalculation. He and screenwriter Piers Ashworth forget that the reason this story does make us feel good is because of the fight.

That fight is between Dave Fishwick (Rory Kinnear), the owner and operator of a minibus dealership/rental place, and the entire financial system of the United Kingdom. Our hero is outmanned and in over his head, but he has a good, true heart. Kinnear makes him so passionate, endearing, and ordinary—despite the fact that he lives in a mansion, surrounded by a lot of financially struggling people—that it's basically impossible not to root for the guy.

His actions matter more than his attitude and his own bank account, because here's a man who genuinely cares about other people. Since the 2008 global financial crisis and its big-bailout aftermath, Dave has been loaning money to his neighbors in the town of Burnley, which was once a place of thriving industry but had fallen upon hard times even before the '08 crash.

For a good number of the folks to whom he has lent cash, Dave probably would be more than happy to just give it to them, as in the case of a friend who became a widow without the means to pay for the funeral, or take a repayment plan on the honor system. Rules, though, are rules, while people are basically decent and want to do things the proper way, so he fills out the official paper work, has people sign on the line, and watches as every single loan is repaid in due time, in full, and without a single missed payment.

That's the setup to Dave's story, which quickly becomes the story of Hugh (a charmingly awkward Joel Fry), a London-based attorney, who is sent up to Burnley by his boss (played by Angus Wright). Dave has a dream to expand his loan-making project into a legitimate bank, complete with all of the financial opportunities and protections afforded to a government-accredited institution.

If it works, Dave can help provide the startup funding for more and bigger local businesses creating hundreds of jobs in the process, and help to guide his neighbors' investments in practical ways, giving them more financial security than they've had. If that isn't enough, he also plans to take all of the bank's profits and donate them to local charities. He's a really good guy, that Dave.

Generally, the tone of all of this is spot-on. The film is frustrated with the system as it is without being angry or cynical about matters. What good would that attitude do in general and specifically when it comes to a story that's actually about someone trying to change that system for the better? The filmmakers establish a firm sense of community, by way of characters just going about their daily lives (The opening scene revolves around small talk and karaoke in a local pub) and those stories of overcoming hardship because of people acting in a genuinely neighborly manner.

In this way, Hugh, the outsider, is the correct perspective for this movie to possess, as the character learns about the ins and outs of Dave's plan, sees the impact this man has had on so many lives, and comes to have a lot of admiration and affection for the town and its population. Of course, some of that last part for Hugh comes from Dave's niece Alexandra (Phoebe Dynevor), a surgeon at the local hospital, who is campaigning to open a free clinic for the townspeople, who often don't need the services of a full hospital or have to wait to see a general practitioner. It's a pleasantly understated sort-of romance that develops between the two, although that low-key quality highlights what a distraction it, along with some later plot elements, is from the core of this story.

That core belongs to the bureaucratic and legal battle in which Dave and Hugh find themselves on account of the businessman's plan. Everything should be straightforward, except that Dave has to apply to a regulatory committee that hasn't approved a new bank in the UK in almost 150 years. Dave goes into it prepared to fight and to make a statement about the inherent corruption of the system, which proves itself by way of a shadowy conspiracy, led by Sir Charles (Hugh Bonneville), to keep the little guy and his big plans down.

The ensuing fight is a solid one. Ashworth explains the intricacies and difficulties of what Dave must accomplish in clear and concise terms, while also giving us a courtroom sequence that's entertaining and righteous in the way that only unlikely but satisfying courtroom sequences can be.

Once certain questions are answered and a major battle is finished, though, Bank of Dave quickly runs out of narrative and thematic steam, resulting in a passively constructed third act that shoves our main characters into the background and gives them almost nothing to do. It's an unfortunate error on a few levels—not least of all in that the movie's just, sincere energy is entirely drained from the proceedings in favor of building up to an anticlimactic cameo. These characters and this story deserve much better than that.

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