Bank of Dave 2: The Loan Ranger — Another gleeful underdog saga

Bank of Dave 2: The Loan Ranger (2025) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five); Unrated, and suitable for all ages

Available via: Amazon Prime and other VOD options

By Derrick Bang

Back in 2023, director Chris Foggin’s delightful Bank of Dave depicted how England’s Dave Fishwick rose from a working-class bloke who parlayed his one-man car repair shop into Britain’s largest minibus supplier, and then — enraged by what the 2008 financial crisis did to ordinary folks — set up his own lending company.

 

After Dave Fishwick (Rory Kinnear, foreground) publicizes the predatory tactics of payday
lenders, they fight back in a way that drags him into court and threatens the existence of
his bank. His colleagues — from left, David (Pearce Quigley), Oliver (Amit Shah) and
Jessica (Chrissy Metz) — offer words of encouragement.

He vowed to do what bank CEOs had forgotten or ignored: to help people and do no harm.

Scripters Piers Ashworth and Clare Keogh shaded some events — it was a film, not a documentary — but the core jaw-dropping details were accurate. (Channel 4’s actual 2012 documentary is readily available via YouTube.)

 

But Fishwick wasn’t finished.

 

Foggin and Ashworth are back, with the just-released Bank of Dave 2: The Loan Ranger, which delivers an equally entertaining and provocative account of what Fishwick did starting in 2013, after learning that some of his customers were being bled dry by the usurious interest charged by payday lending firms.

 

(We’re warned, as was the case with the first film, that this one’s narrative is “true-ish” at best.)

 

Rory Kinnear and Jo Hartley return as Dave and his wife, Nicky, who make the perfect team. Events kick off quickly, when — during a chat show — Dave hears from a caller who is being buried beneath crippling interest rates on a payday loan. 

 

He’s stunned to discover that the British government has done nothing about this predatory business model. Dave then allies himself with Oliver (Amit Shah), a Citizen’s Advice & Law Center counsellor who can lead him to numerous victims. 

 

But unlike Dave’s earlier battle, which was limited to British entities, he and Oliver learn that the two largest payday offenders — dubbed Quickdough and Snapcash Advance — are overseen by a dodgy wealthy American named Carlo Mancini (Rob Delaney). This prompts Dave to cajole Jessica (Chrissy Metz), a New York-based financial journalist, into joining them in his Lancashire home town of Burnley.

 

Their subsequent crusade runs into serious roadblocks. None of the victims is willing to testify in court, for fear of being slapped with even higher interest rates. And while interviewing such folks, Dave learns that both operations are run solely online ... meaning that there’s no physical place for borrowers to pay back in cash, even if they have the necessary amount.

 

That really annoys him ... but it also prompts the ingenious manner with which he decides to channel public outrage, social media being more of a force than it was, back in 2008.

The Hundred Foot Journey: A tasty banquet

The Hundred Foot Journey (2014) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG, and quite pointlessly; suitable for all ages
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.8.14

This film is as sweetly “old world” as its narrative: unhurried, gently amusing and utterly delectable.

Wanting to atone for his father's most recent prank, Hassan (Manish Dayal, right) bravely
prepares a meal for the notoriously fussy Madame Mallory (Helen Mirren). As she gets
ready to taste it, this ritual is observed by her head chef, Jean-Pierre (Clément Sibony),
who knows full well what's about to happen.

Director Lasse Hallström has uncorked another effervescent, food-based fairy tale every bit as enchanting as his 2000 adaptation of Chocolat. That, too, was set in a small French village and based on a charming novel (by Joanne Harris). This new film, adapted by Steven Knight from Richard C. Morais’ equally engaging book, will delight foodies, romantics and those who believe that not all culture clashes must end badly.

And while Hallström’s touch is primarily whimsical, the narrative has a bit of bite, and also a moral that reminds us to follow our hearts ... and that, to quote a certain Dorothy Gale, there’s no place like home.

But while the bulk of Knight’s script is flavorsome, the appetizer-sized prologue is both a mouthful and somewhat difficult to digest. It feels like a massive portion of Morais’ book has been compressed into an abbreviated flashback, showing how the Mumbai-based Kadam family loses its restaurant — and endures horrific personal tragedy — during an unspecified political clash; then moves to London, but finds both the climate and local foodstuffs unappetizing; and subsequently seeks a warmer environment (in both spirit and temperature) during a European road trip.

At which point their vehicle breaks down, fortuitously, outside the quaint little hamlet of Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val, in the south of France.

“Brakes don’t fail for no reason,” insists patriarch Papa (Om Puri), who views this incident as A Sign, much the way he falls in love with the abandoned former restaurant on the village outskirts. But his family’s efforts to transform this dilapidated wreck into a haven of Indian cuisine — cheekily dubbed Maison Mumbai — are viewed with grim disapproval by Madame Mallory (Helen Mirren).

Her Michelin-starred French restaurant, Le Saule Pleureur, is literally just across the country road — 100 feet away — from Papa Kadam’s new venture.

Madame Mallory doesn’t tolerate competition; indeed, she very likely contributed to the failure of the previous eatery across the road. And in a village small enough for her imperious desires to hold sway — much to the distress of the mayor (Michel Blanc, in a small but quite droll part) — the result is all-out war, albeit a skirmish conducted clandestinely, on a battlefield marked by city codes and the local farmers’ market.

A challenge that Papa Kadam embraces with equal enthusiasm.