It's a sexy idea: boffin comes up with brilliant chaos-theory-related formula/software for predicting the future course of the stock market. Enter stage right evil banker who intends on exploiting boffin's discovery to become hideously rich, wipe out the corporate competition and even rule the world in the process. But then what?

Yep, it does sound a lot like Pi (a film which some would argue could not be improved on). But you could forgive Robert Connolly's debut feature from borrowing the idea if it delivers on the "then what?".

The film starts well with an amusing scene in some dusty outback schoolroom where a class of dazed children listen to a middle-aged bank manager wax about the wonders of compound interest. Only the kid at the back seems to be comprehending. He's our man.

Flip forward in time and we are transported to the rarified world of corporate banking. Simon O'Reilly (Anthony LaPaglia), the bullish CEO of Centabank, is being grilled by his board. They don't like the look of the latest company results.

"Companies grow!" growls one of the old men vindictively.

"Unfortunately, there are no more branches left to close," O'Reilly comes back with barely suppressed aggression.

But they still don't like it. The pressure is on for O'Reilly to find more wealth for the bank.

His golden goose is Jim Doyle (David Wenham), the kid at the back at the classroom now grown-up, who is seeking financial support to test his model for stock-market predictions.

Doyle seems to be walking into the lion's den. But then his intellectual brilliance is matched by his enigmatic personality - you can't be sure what he's really up to. Even the girl from the bank he becomes romantically involved with, and who may be an O'Reilly spy, is mystified by him.

Doyle hints that he has a social conscience, yet he is also an obsessive, who even takes to writing formulae out on the table cloths of posh restaurants. Can such a man be bought out? Or has he an ace up his sleeve?

Meanwhile, you're asking what is the connection, if any, with the couple whose houseboat business has just been screwed by the bank and who have suffered personal tragedy as a result?

The questions fall thicker and faster.

Ironically, the film's strength is also its weakness. LaPaglia as corporate shark cuts a brilliant machiavellian figure, an increasingly dark and malignant force. However, while his character grows ever more monstrous Doyle's character becomes ever more opaque and dry, a blank page to be written on. The mystery that is intriguing earlier on becomes irritating.

Character development, where Doyle is concerned, makes way for intermittent excitement in the bank's computer labs and pretty graphics (simulating the movement of data), as the boffins hone the program. It's fun so long as LaPaglia is there rubbing his chubby hands at how much money he is going to make.

The longer the film goes on, the more Doyle blends into the silicon. Connolly leaves himself few options by the time he reaches the clumsy denouement. A film of two halves.