Directed By George Nolfi

Starring – Anthony Mackie, Samuel L. Jackson, Nicholas Hoult

The Plot – Revolutionary businessmen Bernard Garrett (Mackie) and Joe Morris (Jackson) devise an audacious and risky plan to take on the racist establishment of the 1960s by helping other African Americans pursue the American dream. Along with Garrett’s wife Eunice (Nia Long), they train a working class white man, Matt Steiner (Hoult), to pose as the rich and privileged face of their burgeoning real estate and banking empire, while Garrett and Morris pose as a janitor and a chauffeur. Their success ultimately draws the attention of the federal government, which threatens everything the four have built.

Rated PG-13 on appeal for some strong adult language including a sexual reference and racial epithets, and smoking throughout

POSITIVES

– Warm cinematography. Charlotte Christensen adds a layer of touch and class to the film, that exudes itself in the many meaningful shot compositions and alluring color textures that fills the film’s visual capacity. Most of the film is shot intimately tight to convey the sense of isolation and claustrophobia of the two protagonist’s unique situation, but beyond that it’s the way that the natural lighting within each scene transforms itself from feeling like anything being produced today, giving the presentation a transforming quality that duplicates its 1960’s setting faithfully at all times. This faded circumference is made present in other films that Charlotte has captured, like “Fences”, “The Girl on the Train”, and “Far From the Madding Crowd”, but her work here on “The Banker” captures the rendering of an artist who has come fully into her own, and makes so much of the clean-cut atmosphere that exists within the atmosphere play to the mentality of possibility, and the American dream persisting in the minds of the characters at all times.

– Sturdy performances. The three male leads harvest a quality about their characters that not only makes you empathize greatly and invest in the respective subplots, but also allows each of them to stand out for dramatically different reasons. For Mackie, it’s the intelligence that he draws from understanding banking that he balances with the subdued anger of growing up in a generation of inequality that outlines him as an ideal protagonist, and constantly illustrates him as a man carrying an entire race of weight on his broad shoulders. For Jackson, there’s no chameleon transformation, but the raw energy that Sam taps into in his dialogue cements a personality that has been absent from his recent film selections, but adds a much-needed layer of charisma to the film’s tightly drawn characterizations. For Hoult, it’s the chance to stand out as a leading man, which he rarely experiences. This affords him plenty of scene-stealing instances where he relies on ambition and a sponge-like absorbing of the details that stands him neck-in-neck with the audience who are learning with him simultaneously. While not award-worthy in tremendous depth on dramatic reliance, the trio do take the project seriously, and emit a cementing of proof why they are sought out so often with growing filmography lists that require two clicks to show everything.

– Meaningful material. Far from this being an entertaining film, which it definitely is, “The Banker” is also an important one, juggling as many important themes and historical truths with an air of unabashed honesty that strikes just beneath the surface of audience hearts. Contained inside, the film is a refreshing look at racial divides, just not in the way we’ve come to expect from the subgenre that produces three or four efforts a year anymore. What’s different here is the primary West coast setting of California and Texas, which not only prove that injustices were on a much more globalized scale, but also articulate the magnitude of racism that existed at even the highest levels. Traded in are bigot police officers and low-life neighborhood rednecks for pen-pushing, rimmed-glasses men in suits, who hold the ambition of so many in their pre-conceived ideals. It establishes this defeatist attitude for minorities that surrounded them at every business corner that they needed to persist, and solidifies an element of urgency to this story that makes it easy to intepret how current banking laws in today’s world were realized because of such unnecessary adversities.

– Inconsistent Musical score. Those words alone would make this sound like a negative in the film’s overall rating, but the work of good from composer H. Scott Salinas far outweighs those few instances during the film’s first act, where the music doesn’t feel synthetic with the movie’s tonal capacities. One such instance takes place at a club, where a piano can be heard from the band performing on-stage, but not seen when a wide angle shot cuts to them playing. Where it does work, however, is during the film’s second half, when the smooth rendering of jazz music, overtakes the audible direction, and feels ideal for the west coast frame of mind that was present for the time. Especially during montage scenes, the work of electric piano or lightly tapped drum cymbals elicits this infectious energy that not only plays into the success of the trio against all odds, but also reminds the audience of the good time they’re having while watching it all take shape.

– Unorthodox structure. For a movie with such surreal stakes and dramatic enveloping, the decision to craft the script’s outline as a heist movie, with the American dream weighing heavily in the balance, was one that surprisingly added a slice of creative diversity to the film that only further illustrates the magnitude of what our crew is aiming towards. Many familiar elements of this angle are clearly evident; the mental training going into the big conflict, the spontaneous shifting when a plan doesn’t go the way Bernard expected, and of course Bernard and Joe donning their own costumes for careers that are only necessary to keep an eye on everything happening within the destination. This is definitely the strongest element of Nolfi’s often problematic direction, because it tests and teases audience anxieties in an unpredictable manner, and makes so many of the scenes and sequences that exist in the film feel like this group is capable of getting caught at any moment.

– Strong production value. Straight to streaming movies quite often have a weakness to their film’s that often solidify why studios have no faith in them to appeal on a big screen capture, and with film like “The Banker” and last year’s “The Irishman”, it’s clear that these days are long behind us. Benefits to mention in this film include the three-piece suits of its male protagonists, which consistently highlight the trends and influence of the tinsel age. Beyond this, I also appreciated, the set designs of the various interiors that the script took us through, which vibrantly convey Bernard’s growing wellness when played against what’s taking shape in the foreground of the story. It’s subtle proof in what results from all of his hard work, and treats us visually to the many tiers of west coast class divide that still remains a conflict today. Finally, the vintage cars displayed in the film were a treat to a classic automobile enthusiast like myself, who is able to spot even the slightest inconsistency to what is presented. There are none in the film, and all of the examples given here point to an eleven million dollar budget that didn’t waste a penny.

NEGATIVES

– Uneven pacing. This is a two hour film, and for much of the film’s first act, it flew by with such intense precision without ever a single instance of stalling. That unfortunately didn’t keep up in the film’s repetitious second half, which is stunted by a series of questionable decisions that has this feeling like an entirely different movie. For one, the violent tonal shifts of the movie don’t mature in a way that feels believable or synthetic with the story’s pacing. This is evident in the second act, which directly contradicts the shelling of information and instances that took shape during the film’s first thirty minutes. I would be crazy to think that any movie would be able to keep up with a first act so rapid, but the grounded nature of the storytelling in this second act grinded it to a screeching halt in ways that had me barely hanging on. In addition to this, the strange focus on Hoult’s character over Mackie or Jackson was one that I truly didn’t understand, and made so much of the essential focus of the film feel like I wasn’t getting what I paid for.

– Too safe. This film reminded me a lot of 2018’s “Green Book”. Not only for the racial inequalities that fill the film from beginning to end, but also because of the unconfrontational level of approach in its racial subject matter that the film never explores to its truest potential. In fact, nothing in the film feels personal or even condemning for the two black protagonists, an element that I blame wholeheartedly on the decision to cast a white director whose own experiences can’t scratch the surface for Bernard’s real life story, which is far more anguishing than anything displayed in the film. With a PG-13 rating, you know the material will never be able to fully express itself in ways that are justified or ideal to the kind of hostile environments that black citizens were facing on a daily basis, and if “The Banker” can’t give us that, nothing in it will feel believable because of such.

– Boring dialogue. I can understand a movie centering around banking and the overall real estate business to have no shortage of lines that fly completely over my head, but the abundance of lingo used in the film was every bit as long-winded as it was inaccessible to someone with very little knowledge, like myself, and makes scenes of exposition a chore to get through. Look at a film like “The Big Short”, which intentionally dumbs down its themes and material so that everyone understands it, and is on the same page. That approach, while not to that meandering degree, could’ve been used in “The Banker”, especially when you consider that the numbers become such a prominent burden to the trio the longer the movie goes on. Especially with something that involves math, and then often leaves a long pause for audience to speak over with their own summaries, the film does nothing to make its material compelling, and never approaches its audience at an eye level that makes them on even ground with every matter that comes to light.

– Abrupt ending. In a lesser film, I would contradict that the film’s closing five minutes may have run out of money, and instead went for a tell-over-show manner to its storytelling. But the decisions here don’t seem to cater to that excuse, purely because the only thing needed for more clarity was more screen time added to an already ambitious two hour run time. The court scene (There’s only one) is brief in its meaning, and the film’s epilogue feels tacked-on to give this some semblance of a positive ending. It’s especially frustrating when you consider that the film’s climax is underutilized in such a way that it will inevitably leave audiences souring during the moments when the tragic aspect to the story should hit the hardest, and disappoints when it can’t maintain a shred of drama to play into something so environmentally terrifying. If anything, I guess it gives moviegoers a reason to dig a little deeper, and seek out the true story biographical novel that the film is based off of.

My Grade: 6/10 or C