The Bank, a finely done, enjoyable stock market mystery, in no way deserves the inferior "exciting thriller" press-kit designation used to describe Australian Robert Connolly’s first venture as joint screenwriter-director. It’s a good Down Under film that doesn’t deal with hideous racism against half-white Methodist Aborigines or heroism in the Great War, that passes on that country’s unique fauna and sometimes soulful manhood, that has no need of dubbing by American voices, and that is eerily topical. Australia’s Melbourne -- mentioned by name but a single time here -- could as readily be Hong Kong, or London, or New York.

Not so much an insider -- as in information or trading story, as an inside film -- meaning indoors in minds and computer-stocked bank basements, The Bank effectively counterpoints its few brief out-of-doors scenes (a rural school, a bucolic lake, one small town). These outside scenes seem removed and innocent but contain, as well, the seeds for death, violence and revenge when acted upon by the predators of the surprisingly dreary, rainy capital.

Nor, despite first appearances, do Connolly and his actors descend to simple morality tale, merely pitting crude, obscenity-spewing Executives against unalloyed Common Folk goodness. Although there are some unhappy cloying moments, excessively bald touches at the two extremes of unscrupulous big-guy power vs. little-fellow sweet decency, at the heart of the interest here, aside from a probably not fortuitous connection with recent headlines, lies a well-conceived ambiguity.

As Jim Doyle, and looking like a young Robert Redford, David Wenham (Moulin Rouge) gives the right feel to the mathematician barely out of doctoral degree diapers who has almost perfected the philosopher’s stone: a formula for accurately predicting the Stock Market. For reasons neither altruistic nor scientific, the Centrabank CEO played by Anthony LaPaglia (Lantana)gives all-systems-go support to the young man’s initially innocent efforts to round out his formulae and theory.

From minute one, with remarkable lack of any and all nuance, LaPaglia’s Simon O’Reilly reveals all that he is and can or will be: too bad to be true, no need for his trophy wife to understate him with crude name-calling. Even without today’s glaring reminders, such lords of "the age of corporate feudalism" surely do exist, and they are dangerous. But what of taciturn hero Doyle, who will not reveal just yet who and what he is, where his loyalties and conscience lie -- or, indeed, if he actually possesses such virtues. And his conveniently available "executive teller" lady love Michelle (Sibylla Budd), where does she fit in (or not)?

Doyle plays it most close to the vest, and not until the feverish quadruple finale -- a village library, the bank’s computer nerve center, O'Reilly’s mansion and the Big Board of the Exchange -- does he allow a small smile and stand revealed. There are, of course, some wild prior improbabilities -- overlookable in the taut unraveling -- but, true to the mystery that moves it, the film consciously leaves loose threads that are the stuff of life. One questions whether windfall fortune -- cash is cold, they say -- compensates for irreparable loss and grieving, or if it can atone for harmful perjury. Do twenty-five years focused for one moment constitute a reason to live, and what does one do for an encore? It does not occur to require such questions of Edmond Dantès, but here they do indeed matter. Even Doyle’s physical destination, his whereabouts, is unknown, though he quietly hopes Michelle may join him there, wherever, and "soon."

We, meanwhile, have been taken in, in the good sense, mystified, bamboozled. We have learned nothing new, or at least unsuspected, about the System nor peered deeply into hearts. But we have been reassured. Justice exists, although, unfortunately, perhaps only in good movies.

(Released by The Cinema Guild; no MPAA rating available.)