Review of The Banker (2020) by Bradens584 — 20 Dec 2020
The Banker had a rough start. It suffered the infamous true story to movie syndrome, which is like the book to movie syndrome but ten times worse. You can’t tell a person’s entire life in a movie without either seeming disjointed or changing the source material massively.
Too many events happen in a person’s life and not all of them are going to fit into one convenient narrative. The best thing to do when adapting a true story to the screen is to make it a TV show. TV shows do not need to have the same pacing as a film and can cover multiple arcs both on an episodic and serialised basis.
And that’s what they should have done with the Banker. The film skips over a large and extremely significant part of the characters’ lives and sometimes has to sacrifice character building for cramming the sheer amount of events in the lives of these quite extraordinary people into one 2 hour movie.
But that being said, once it gets going, the Banker is a really enjoyable film. The writing is good and the plot, while poorly paced, tells a very interesting story. And a story that is important and poignant in today’s social climate surrounding issues of racial tension.
And the core of this movie is the brilliant performances by Anthony Mackie and the incredible Samuel L. Jackson.
This review of The Banker (2020) was written by Bradens584 on 20 Dec 2020.
The Banker has generally received positive reviews.
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