[rating=6.00]
The streaming wars heated up considerably with Apple’s jump into the fray via AppleTV+. While the network hasn’t made that big of a splash yet, the tech giant has given every indication they’re in this for the long haul. Like their predecessors, AppleTV+ has made big bets on original content, hoping the mix of big named productions and streaming rights deal swill bring new users to their platform.
Arguably their biggest cinematic get thus far has been The Banker, but even that caused some Apple to wade through some troubled waters. Originally slated for release last fall following a premiere at the AFI Festival, The Banker was pushed back following allegations of molestation against one of the film’s producers, Bernard Garrett Jr, who also happens to be the son of the film’s titular banker, Bernard Garrett Sr, played by Anthony Mackie. After that, the elder Garrett’s second wife, Linda, assailed the film for its inaccurate portrayals and their erasure of her from the story.
And yet Apple sails on, finally releasing The Banker nearly four months prior to its original date. Was all the turmoil and turbulence worth it? Eh, kind of. The film, directed and co-written by George Nolfi (Birth of the Dragon), often feels too sanitized for its own good, even despite fantastic performances from Mackie and Samuel L. Jackson. It’s distinctly safe in that biopic way, carefully afraid to rock the boat too hard in tricky to navigate waters.
As mentioned, we follow the life of Bernard Garrett, a young black man who, in the late-50s, moves from Texas to Los Angeles with dreams of making it big buying real estate. After some success, massive setbacks inspire him to join forces with a local nightclub owner, Joe Morris (Jackson), in order to purchase bigger and better properties. Of course, the racism of the day means they need to recruit a nice, clean cut white boy, Matt Steiner (Nicholas Hoult), to operate as the face of their organization against the white elites who otherwise wouldn’t sell. Eventually, the trio buys a bank in Texas with plans to use it as a way to lend money to the black community. Unfortunately, they find that the existing power structures aren’t content to just let them get away with it.
It’s difficult to deny that The Banker is quite often a heartfelt, charming film. The trio of Mackie, Jackson, and Hoult are all wonderful and each brings a dynamic to the ensemble that is, in its own way, delightful. Even working with an occasionally shaky script, this team does wonders with the material and brings life to this fascinating story. Even with the accuracies called into question, Nolfi seems to have gotten at least the gist of the tale correct—again, in that distinctly biopic way—and his three stars are a delight to watch.
A big problem, however, is a lack of consistency in the tone and direction of the film. The events (and people) portrayed in The Banker are complex, but Nolfi insists on telling the story in a straightforward, A to B fashion that requires often abrupt changes of direction with little or no warning. One minute it’s a poignant tear-jerker about a man going up against a corrupt system, the next it’s an almost slapstick comedy with Hoult playing the buffoon to Mackie’s and Jackson’s straight men, and suddenly it’s high stakes legal drama.
None of these threads have much room to breathe, however, which makes for an often uneven watching experience. On top of that, while never bad, The Banker is almost too generic for its own good. While it does a better job of exploring race than, say, The Green Book, it still feels too held back to really take off.
Still, it’s hard to deny that The Banker also does an impressive job of making real estate feel entertaining, which is almost assuredly a sentence no one has ever written. Scenes with Mackie and Jackson training Hoult’s working class schlub in the ways of business are alternately charmingly funny and kind of entertaining, even when they’re discussing how to accurately estimate a property’s valuation.
Ultimately, The Banker is an uneven film that manages to gain some footing based on the strengths of its three leads. At the end of the day, it’s about on par with most of the output from AppleTV+’s competitors. It’s a perfectly fine film, nothing more. While disappointing considering all that could have been mined from the story, it does its job well enough and is, if nothing else, pretty watchable.
The Banker is now playing in select theaters. It premieres on AppleTV+ on March 20.
