![]() ![]() #Abacus federal savings bank determination movie#The movie opens with the courtly and dapper Sung, now 80, and his wife watching “It’s a Wonderful Life” on television, as Sung explains his powerful identification with James Stewart’s George Bailey, the savings-and-loan purveyor who saved his own town from the clutches of greed. In 1984, the Abacus Federal Savings Bank was founded by Thomas Sung, a Shanghai-born lawyer who wanted to give something back to the Chinatown community. Yet that review wouldn’t tell the whole story. The movie is urgently made, and it’s tempting to offer a standard liberal-advocacy review of it. to be prosecuted for mortgage fraud in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown. ![]() In this case, the angle is more overtly political: “Abacus” tells the story of a family-owned bank in New York’s Chinatown that became the one and only bank in the U.S. His new movie, “Abacus: Small Enough to Jail,” falls in line with previous James efforts like “At the Death House Door” (about a Texas execution chaplain who became an anti-death penalty crusader) or “The Interrupters” (about the attempt to steer troubled Chicago youths away from violence). The captivating Roger Ebert biography “Life Itself” was an exception, but in general the qualities of a Steve James film are that it has a highly visible and passionate social conscience it tracks its subject over time with empathy and skill and there’s a fly-on-the-wall Zen plainness to his approach that recalls the work of Fred Wiseman. It’s been 22 years since director Steve James released “Hoop Dreams,” and though none of his other films has had anything approaching that impact, in his quiet way he’s become a brand-name documentarian with a signature way of seeing. ![]()
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