This is quite the charmer.
Director Chris Foggin’s irresistible underdog dramedy is loosely based on the actual exploits of Dave Fishwick, a working-class Burnley bloke who parlayed a one-man car repair shop into what soon became the largest minibus supplier in Britain, making him a multi-millionaire.
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| No good deed goes unpunished: When Dave Fishwick (Rory Kinnear) remains stubbornly undeterred by London banking officials who refuse to let him play in their sandbox, he winds up in court for his impertinence. |
Enraged by the early 21st century financial scandals that tanked economies on both sides of the pond — Barclays over there, Lehman Brothers here, along with others elsewhere in the world — Fishwick realized that the established banking institution had completely lost sight of its twin missions: to help people and do no harm.
Particularly because the CEOs involved not only evaded jail time, but in most cases still pocketed obscenely high bonuses.
He therefore set up his own lending company to assist “regular folks” living in his Lancashire town. (His grateful “customers,” honest to the core, always paid him back.) Emboldened by this success, Fishwick embarked on a mission to become an actual bank: an audacious desire, because the London-based financial authorities hadn’t granted a new bank license in more than a century.
(Astonishing, but true: Metro Bank, founded in 2010 — while Fishwick was setting up his operation — became the first new bank to launch in the UK in more than 150 years.)
Trust Foggin — who delighted us with 2019’s Fisherman’s Friends, a different sort of fact-based underdog tale — to spin this unlikely saga into an equally enjoyable romp. (After all, who doesn’t hate upper-echelon bankers?)
Scripter Piers Ashworth has taken considerable liberty with actual events — an opening text block admits that this film is “based on a true(ish) story” — and pretty much everything aside from Fishwick and his innovative gamble is fabricated. But that doesn’t matter, when the result is this entertaining.
Events begin when Dave (winningly played by Rory Kinnear) contacts a London legal firm to help him jump the hoops required to become a “real bank.” Senior partner Clarence (Angus Wright), somewhat amused by the barmy novelty of this request, dispatches young Hugh (Joel Fry).
One gets a sense that Hugh hasn’t ever left London’s metropolitan environment; his baffled expression, upon arriving in Burnley, is akin to that of a man suddenly confronted by an alien landscape. Fry’s stammering awkwardness is priceless.
Although he clearly has been sent to talk Dave out of this mad scheme, Hugh can’t help being captivated by his host’s earnestness and down-to-earth bonhomie. Besides which, there’s a certain logic to Dave’s pitch.
“Why do all banks have to be supermarkets?” he quite reasonably asks. “Why can’t some be corner shops?”
And, more to the point, “How can London decide if folks in Burnley are a good investment?”
(Pay attention to the way some of these folks say “London.” One suspects they’d be grateful for a spittoon.)
Hugh’s interest in the locals perks up further after meeting Dave’s niece, Alexandra (Phoebe Dynevor), an A&E (urgent care) doctor somewhat contemptuous of big-city airs. Although Alexandra may as well wear a sign that says “Romantic Interest,” Dynevor plays her with a degree of playfully feisty, perky snark that’s a good match for Fry’s fish-out-of-water nervousness.
Getting dragged to a local pub’s karaoke night hardly assuages this anxiety, but credit where due: Hugh rises to the occasion. Dave’s flair for this vocal sport — further cementing his “one with the people” sincerity — deftly sets up a cool moment in this story’s third act.
Hugh Bonneville exercises his dismissive smirks as the villain of this piece: Sir Charles Denbigh, a venerable member of London’s banking elite, who orchestrates a seriously underhanded maneuver to stop this Burnley upstart. This scheme is an eyebrow lift, relying on contrivance that’s a bit too obvious, and — if only briefly — weakens the good will that Foggin and Ashworth have built, up to this point.
Ashworth also could have introduced and fleshed out a few more Burnley residents; British films of this nature always are better with “colorful” sidebar characters.
That said, Kinnear’s performance surmounts these modest quibbles; he owns this film. His Dave is an irresistible “cheeky chappy”: relentlessly cheerful, boyishly enthusiastic, indefatigable, quick with a smile and a friendly pat on the back, unfazed by every setback. Honestly, I wish he lived next door; I can’t imagine a better neighbor, or a more compassionate public servant.
Although Ashworth goes over the top with this film’s surprise finale — what should actually have happened, but, alas, did not — by then we’re so captivated that it scarcely matters.
One final real-world note: Dave’s application still is pending, so Burnley Savings and Loans Limited cannot yet be called a bank. (During a 2012 interview with The Guardian, he said that a London expert told him that “If I use the word deposit or say I’m a bank, then I will go to prison.”)
Where’s the justice?
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