The businessman with a heart takes on crooked payday lenders in this predictable sequel that gets by on its heartfelt performances
It won no prizes for subtlety, but cheerful, victory-of-the-underdog comedy Bank of Dave featured a stonking lead performance by Rory Kinnear as Dave Fishwick. He’s the Burnley businessman who made millions selling vans then took a stand against fatcat bankers by opening his own community bank, the Bank of Dave, in 2011. Now Kinnear is back for a sequel, this time taking on crooked payday lenders. Like the first film, Bank of Dave 2 is predictable and cliché-ridden but gets by on likable, heartfelt performances, and the knowledge that in real life some of this stuff actually happened.
The film picks up two years after the original. The “Bank of Dave” on the high street in Burnley is still going strong – lending to ordinary people who struggle to secure loans from bigger banks. Dave is outraged to discover the sharp practices of payday lenders targeting the vulnerable (in one case squeezing £3,000 out of a £600 loan). Rob Delaney does his best in a small role as the film’s one-note villain Carlo Mancini, the New Jersey owner of fictional payday lender Quick Dough, who has links to organised crime.
