‘We’re gonna have a bank that looks after the whole community…’
You’ve seen this film before. Fish out of water visits the wild north from London. Chirpy working-class community. Charismatic protagonist. Dodgy accents. It’s Billy Elliott. It’s Made in Dagenham. It’s Pride. And yet, when this kind of story is done well, it can be annoyingly difficult to resist…
Dave (Rory Kinnear) wants to set up a local bank in the community of Burnley. In order to do this, he employs the services of inner-city lawyer Hugh (Joel Fry). Predictably, Dave’s niece Alexandra (Phoebe Dynevor) is perfect and melts Hugh’s heart along the way. We also have Angus Wright stealing every scene where he appears as Hugh’s unscrupulous boss Clarence and Hugh Bonneville providing a fun cameo as an evil banker.
This was a weird one for me. On the one hand, director Chris Foggin and writer Piers Ashworth’s portrayal of Burnley is incredibly condescending. The north of England is presented as some kind of socialist enclave in which everyone is morally faultless and friendly and everything is perfect. Now, I’ve been to Burnley. It isn’t like that. On the other hand, Bank of Dave does double down on the Burnley aspect of it. Most of it is filmed in the town and local band The Goa Express prominently features, as does local legend Sean Dyche (a name I never thought I’d be dropping in a film review).
Despite my misgivings, Bank of Dave is warm and funny in places, it’s well acted, with Kinnear just about pulling off a Lancashire accent and Fry excellent throughout, and the central message of the film is an admirable one (although it is admittedly delivered cynically)
It would be curmudgeonly to be dismissive of Bank of Dave, as it is genuinely one of those films that I can’t imagine anyone actively disliking, but there is no denying that we have seen this kind of story many times.