Movie Review: BANK OF DAVE 2: THE LOAN RANGER

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: March 17th, 2026 / 09:27 PM

BANK OF DAVE 2: THE LOAN RANGER | ©2026 Quiver Distribution

Rating: Not Rated
Stars: Rory Kinnear, Chrissy Metz, Amit Shah, Jo Hartley, Dan Fogler, Rob Delaney, Leila Farzad, William Travis, Hugh Bonneville, Ella Bruccoleri, Def Leppard
Writer: Piers Ashworth
Director: Chris Foggin
Distributor: Quiver Distribution
Release Date: March 13, 2026

Based on a real person and a real bank (and a 2012 documentary), BANK OF DAVE opened in 2023. It chronicled the efforts of David “Dave” Fishwick (Rory Kinnear) to open a new financial institution in the working-class northern England town of Burnley. The Bank of Dave (as it is named) is designed to help people who normally can’t get bank loans. Despite problems like the fact that the U.K. government hadn’t given the go-ahead to a new bank in 150 years, Dave succeeded.

Now BANK OF DAVE writer Piers Ashworth, director Chris Foggin and leads Kinnear and Jo Hartley (who plays Dave’s wife Nicky) are back with a sequel, BANK OF DAVE 2: THE LOAN RANGER. This one sees Dave taking on loan shark-like payday lenders.

For anyone not caught up, BANK OF DAVE 2: THE LOAN RANGER handily begins two years after the bank has opened. Dave gives an interview to a U.K. TV talk show about the documentary made about him, which fills us in on the main points covered in the first film.

Then Dave goes on a radio show, where a caller opens his eyes to the admittedly horrendous amounts of interest charged by payday loan companies. (Seems like Dave, given his profession, might have heard something about this by now, but hey, dramatic license.)

Dave is still a regular guy who enjoys singing karaoke at his local pub in the evenings, but he doesn’t have to search far to find people who have been catastrophically affected by predatory lending practices.

With the assistance of accountant Oliver (Amit Shah), who gives free advice as a volunteer at a community center, Dave delves into how these companies are getting away with what they’re doing.

His search leads him to New York journalist Jessica (Chrissy Metz), who has written extensively about similar problems in the U.S. (Via Jessica, BANK OF DAVE 2 asserts that this kind of virtual extortion has been essentially wiped out in the U.S. – would that this were true.)

Dave offers to pay her way to Burnley if she’ll help him. Jessica is at first averse to travel but gradually changes her mind.

Even with BANK OF DAVE 2’s narrowing the main problem down to a pair of villains as opposed to a whole industry, it still works on an exposé level, if maybe a wider-eyed one than is strictly credible.

We learn some strange but true and dismaying facts about the ease with which financial abuse of the public can be perpetrated. We get some courtroom scenes and confrontations that are enjoyable, and even a few hijinks – Def Leppard fans should be pleased.

But with Jessica and Oliver, we get an entire subplot about how these two open up and have richer lives because of what they’re doing. The first film did something similar with two other characters who don’t appear here.

While certainly sleuthing for the public good seems like it would be uplifting, through no fault of Shah and Metz, who are both sincere and committed, there isn’t anything new in the exploration of Oliver and Jessica. It seems like the time spent on them could have been better used for a deeper look at what was surely a fraught process, as the real Fishwick did indeed go to legal war with the loan sharks.

Kinnear maintains an air of jovial decency as Dave, Hartley is all heart as Nicky, Leila Farzad is appropriately cool as a devious lawyer and Rob Delaney gives the main bad guy just the right amount of blasé high-handedness.

Fishwick is one of BANK OF DAVE 2’s executive producers, which may explain that, while Dave sometimes gets depressed, he is never anything other than kind, caring and a very ordinary fellow. It’s an unobjectionable depiction, but giving him an edgy moment or two might have added a bit of color.

BANK OF DAVE 2: THE LOAN RANGER is lightly entertaining and agreeably informative, making us curious about the historical record. However, when it goes off-topic, it lags.

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