It would be hard to imagine any corporate institution that is more loathed at the moment than banks. Particularly following the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, which saw the economy nearly cratered, the government issuing a $700 billion bailout to prevent the collapse of banks, fines levied, but no executives jailed, there is a general feeling that Wall Street got away with financial murder. And this makes it all the more curious and fascinating that Steve James’ latest documentary, “Abacus: Small Enough To Jail,” spins a David and Goliath story where the one carrying the slingshot is a bank. However, Abacus Federal Savings Bank, a Chinese American bank largely serving the immigrant community, is not your average financial firm.
READ MORE: The 20 Best Documentaries Of 2016 So Far
Founded by Thomas Sung in 1984, Abacus became a pillar of New York City’s Chinatown, giving residents a place where they could bank in their language, and receive credit, a service that other institutions would often deny them. But perhaps more importantly, Sung was a trusted individual, already known by many in the neighborhood through his years as a practicing immigration lawyer. In terms of size, Abacus is quite small, with only six branches, but their footprint in the lives of its customers — particularly when it came to helping many toward home ownership — was large. However, it all came close to collapsing — twice.
The first time was in 2003 when an executive embezzled $1 million from Abacus sparking fears that they were insolvent, with customers lining up around the block to withdraw their money. Sung managed to calm his clients and stay in business, but it was only a few years later when another scandal arose, and the timing couldn’t be worse. In 2009, loan officer Ken Yu was found to be pocketing mortgage payments, and when the aggrieved customer took her complaint to the police, New York City’s District Attorney saw an opportunity. After a thorough investigation into Abacus’ loan and mortgage operations, they decided to do something that no one had seriously done with the big banks following the 2008 crisis — take them to court. And unlike the major institutions who negotiated fines and cut deals, the DA had no such flexibility for Abacus, offering them at best a chance to plead guilty, on top of which they would have to pay a fine. They refused, and decided to fight to prove their innocence.
What follows in ‘Small Enough To Jail’ is a thorough, but easy to follow look at what was ultimately overzealous prosecution against a bank that, while they may have had minor irregularities in how they issued mortgages, were certainly far from working with the kind of duplicitous criminality of the major players in banking. It speaks volumes to the surreal nature of the trial that a representative from Fannie Mae was a defence witness, while the prosecution’s star on the stand was Ken Yu, who had already confessed to bilking his clients out of money. With input from both sides of the courtroom, and insight from jury members, James lays out the absurdity of the claims against Abacus, but as per usual from the director, it’s not just the facts of the story he’s interested in, but the people behind it.
The filmmaker finds a compelling group of individuals as the focus for ‘Small Enough To Jail’ in the Sung family. The loyalty of Thomas Sung’s four daughters not just to him, but his legacy with the bank, is admirable in its ferocity, while wife and mother Hwei Lin’s concern about how the court case, which stretches across five years, is affecting her husband is movingly simple: “It’s killing you,” she exclaims. Indeed, Thomas Sung’s worries as time marches on are less about whether or not his bank can survive the beating it might take on its reputation, but how the DA’s prosecutorial approach (which included a crudely staged photo op of indicted Abacus employees handcuffed together, being walked through the courthouse halls) will affect the perception of Chinese Americans. Sung’s measure of success isn’t necessarily found on a balance sheet, it also comes from ensuring he’s always doing the best for his community.
While the film never reaches the kind of emotional peaks of James’ best work like “Hoop Dreams” or “The Interrupters,” “Abacus: Small Enough To Jail” is no less compelling. And it serves a very important reminder, particularly at a time when more than ever, it seems banks are putting profit in front of people: in many corners of the country, there are still banks that operate under George Bailey’s principal that “your money’s in Joe’s house… and in the Kennedy house, and Mrs. Macklin’s house, and a hundred others.” As we learn at the beginning of ‘Abacus,’ Thomas Sung’s favorite movie, “It’s A Wonderful Life,” seems to partially drive his approach to business, and in an industry that would rather sell short on its customers, that’s no small miracle. [B]
Click here for our complete coverage of the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival
