Movie Review: “The Big Short” is Brilliant
Maybe it was watching “The Big Short” here in Las Vegas, where the housing crash hit so hard and caused so much pain, which not only made the movie pertinent, but intensely personal.
An evening showing of the film last night in Downtown Summerlin drew nervous laughter, moments of spontaneous clapping, audible gasps, and above all else — visible anger from the packed audience riveted by a cinematic re-creation of the most grotesque national scandal of our lifetimes, the events leading up to the global financial crisis of 2008.
“The Big Short” is brilliant. Undoubtedly one of the best movies of the year, it may be the best film ever made about Wall Street and high finance — far more credible and satisfying even than “Wall Street” (1987) and “The Wolf of Wall Street” (2013). This film is so much better than its predecessors on so many levels because each one of the performances are so utterly convincing, that we tend to forget we’re watching a story based on reality. We become completely absorbed in the plot, even though we all know how things are going to turn out, because so many unscrupulous deeds impacted the lives of nearly everyone sitting in the audience in some manner. If we didn’t lose our homes or our jobs directly, or have to re-finance and pay much higher interest rates, most of us knew someone who suffered badly. The housing bubble and eventual burst impacted us all. Lives were ruined.
The American economic system gets stripped to the core and is eviscerated by this movie. Like a starving crocodile on steroids chomping on its own tail, spawning an appetite to consume everything within striking distance of its jaws, big banks and giant investment firms aren’t merely depicted as reptilian institutions of gross intemperance. The whole system is a swamp built on corruption, and even fraud. Even the regulators and overseers, including credit-rating agencies (Moody’s, Standard and Poor’s) and the Securities and Exchange Commission, our neutral overseers entrusted with providing safeguards and confidence, are shown to be complicit.
If all this sounds like a brutal indictment of capitalism — well, it is. However, much to its credit, “The Big Short” doesn’t take the preachy, nor predictable route of so-called liberal Hollywood. In fact, there’s none of that here. Its captivation stems from somehow turning the bad guys into the good guys. We cheer for cut-throat financial gurus and socially-awkward outcasts who somehow saw what no one else could see, sometimes even refusing to look at the real picture which became a teetering tower of building blocks grounded on a warped foundation. A few contrarian investors were brave enough to stand in the middle of the tracks with the freight train roaring. They risked every dollar (and then some), gambled their reputations, and ultimately stuck to their convictions — that the housing bubble and stock market boom of the early 2000’s wasn’t just an illusion. It was a ticking atomic bomb. Everyone thought they were mad. The warning signs were ignored. The party was way too good to leave. Then, the punch bowl spiked with poison ran over, flooded the room, and drowned just about everyone holding onto worthless paper. Watching the closing scenes, we don’t know whether to cheer or throw up.
“The Big Short” is based on the best-selling book by Michael Lewis. Directed by Adam McKay, this is clearly a career breakthrough and bold statement of transition light years removed from his other, mostly forgettable, lightweight movies, perhaps summed up in the abysmal “Anchorman.” Once senses McKay knowingly paid his dues making garbage (and lots of money) in order to produce meatier, more consequential movies – this being the roll out.
The film stars Steve Carell and Christian Bale, both in Oscar-worthy performances. Carell, who began his career as a comedic actor and comes off a far darker and more serious role in last year’s “Foxcatcher” is in unprecedented territory, putting on 30 pounds and playing a complex character conveying the widest possible gambit of emotions. Bale, now easily one of the top five actors working today, once again demonstrates his broad range playing a somewhat dysfunctional financial genius absorbed in heavy-metal music. Yes, this movie is — very male and very White. Then again, Wall Street is — very male and very White.
The supporting cast includes Ryan Gosling, Brad Pitt, Marisa Tomei, and Melissa Leo — all of whom are excellent. The smaller roles too, appear to have stepped right off the 67th floor elevator at Lehman Brothers. While the entire financial world is getting high on it’s own supply, the four leading characters (Carell, Bale, Gosling, and Pitt) manage to see through the fog of lies and corruption and begin “shorting” the American housing market — thus the film’s title.
Everyone thinks they’re crazy. After all, for tens of millions of Americans, housing was the one investment that never depreciated. These money-managing contrarians were willing to invest vast sums of money on the rickety prospect that something would happen that had never happened before. Banks laughed openly at them, but willingly took their funds. Their own employees expressed confusion and frustration. Their investors were outraged and threatened lawsuits. Oddly enough, even though we know what’s coming, that in the end they will be proven correct and will make billions while the rest of the financial world goes down in flames, the story remains just as suspenseful. It’s a hold onto your seat ride to the edge of the cliff peering into the financial and moral abyss.
Credit a number of unique factors for the movie’s ingenuity. First, there’s a staccato plot design. “The Big Short” plays out like a quirky camp-version of PBS’s “Frontline.” Put another way, it’s a far more voyeuristic “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room“ (2005), which documented the energy company’s corruption and collapse. We’re made to feel like we don’t quite belong inside these secret board meetings on Wall Street and are about to get tossed out of the room at any moment. Jerky camera movements and odd angles of cringing faces makes for a compelling sense of realism, almost as though we’re hiding behind the potted plant while the conspirators are making plans to burn Rome. Then, there’s the varied musical soundtrack, creatively interspersed at just the right moments to string our gambit of emotions together like the track of a roller coaster. The selection of songs used, replete with the narcissistic pervasiveness of those times, is a perfect fit and captures the mood of the day.
Finally, the film takes a highly complex and even confusing subject — shorting the housing market — and intersperses a lot of investment terms that won’t be familiar to most viewers. Even financial experts sometimes have a hard time defining credit swaps and other complexities of high finance. This is where the film not only excels, but reaches an entirely new plateau. The clever device used in the film to explain some of these vital elements to the story will not be revealed in this review. Yet, these short scenes are extraordinarily informative and entertaining, as well as crucial to our understanding of what’s going on. Trust me. It’s just something you’ll have to see for yourself.
Rarely have a departed a movie where I was laughing, disturbed, and motivated — all at the same time. I can’t recall any movie where I was both emotionally impacted and yet more educated than before I went in. You too will laugh, cry, get angry, and probably learn something.
“The Big Short“ is that good. It’s a must-see film and quite possibly the best movie of the year.
It didn’t sound like a brutal indictment of capitalism…it sounded like a brutal indictment of CRONY capitalism. Unlike your favored socialism…pure capitalism is the greatest most successful economic model in all of recorded history.
i thought it was brilliant. i especially liked that all of the “protagonists” we followed were pretty screwed up guys too. like the film maker was saying: this is what populates wall street — they all wear the same hat and play by the same rules (and these rules are all pretty much legal, even as they will destroy us.)
I think he should have excoriated Rubin, Summers, and Greenspan for removing all of the rules that led to this incendiary conflagration that roasted our economy in 2008.
these guys were all just plain old greedy – but law abiding. the three amigos were the ones who set up this powder keg. and none of them were ever really held to account for their ignorant and stupefyingly stupid assumptions about wall street (although Greenspan admitted he didn’t really understand how it all worked, once the fireball happened.)