“GREED, FOR LACK OF A BETTER WORD, IS GOOD. GREED WORKS.”
FAMOUS LAST WORDS
The Big Short
Review by Paul Preston
Over thirty million people were negatively affected by the collapse of the housing market in 2007. So why am I so entertained? That’s the fine line director Adam McKay balances in his new film “The Big Short”, that brings wit and sharp humor to a tragic sequence of events.
I came into “The Big Short” angry. I had already seen Charles Ferguson’s Oscar winning documentary “Inside Job” which laid out the greedy mishandling of mortgage bundles that were headed towards default with no one monitoring or correcting the situation because there was SO MUCH MONEY being made. Plus, if you’re just paying attention (and many aren’t), you could see the fallout of families losing homes, businesses shuttering and people losing jobs all over the news. It was shady dealing by shady people who were in it for themselves.
“The Big Short” deals with the few characters who saw this coming, and their attempt to profit off of the housing market implosion. Seems pretty nefarious to try and make money off of a financial event that will close companies, send people to the unemployment line and tear families apart. The odd achievement of the film is…we root for them.
Christian Bale delivers a can’t-stop-watching-him performance as Michael Burry, a hedge fund manager who has stunted social skills but meticulous analyzing skills that helped him track industry trends and callout the market’s dive-bomb years before it happened. The disdain and condescension thrown at Burry when he approaches the banks to place his bet against them easily puts you in Burry’s camp and soon Wall Street banker Jared Vennett gets wind of Burry’s theory and is one of the few to run with it. Ryan Gosling plays Vennett with his slick charm in overdrive and it works perfectly.
Steve Carell is at his best as the caustic as another hedge fund manager, Mark Baum, one of the few character willing (ANXIOUS) to call out the selfish, irresponsible dealings of the banks to their face. His boiling energy is contagious and fun to watch as a gaggle of young analysts try to keep up with and please him. The final story in this layered film is that of Ben Rickert (Brad Pitt), a financial expert who has seen it all (and seen enough), tasked with helping two young start-up businessmen come up with the capital required to make the similar bet against the system. Rickert represents most of us as he feels the most, sensing the catastrophe that will come in the wake of financial collapse.
So, the whole real-life story is a giant mess yet is masterfully handled by director McKay, who employs snappy dialogue between all the players and fast cutting to jump between stories and fly all over the country as the characters go deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole. If you’re looking for a relationship movie, this isn’t it, the plot is king and there’s a lot of it. The characters often break the fourth wall to explain what’s going on or remind you that the outrageous behavior you’re seeing is a true story. One ingenious gimmick is to have celebrities come out of nowhere and describe the complex inner workings of money-making financial industry scams. This works as a funny joke but, even more so, says how dumb we are as Americans that it has to come to an appearance by Selena Gomez to make us understand how money works.
This film follows on the heels of “99 Homes” to remind us that no one has really gone to jail of paid any kind of price for morally reprehensible financial fraud. Are we not all in this together? Not by a long shot. But what the film does effectively is make the whole story accessible, vibrant and urgent. You may not like anybody by the time “The Big Short” is over, but it’s a whirlwind of a two hours and ten minutes.
Directed by: Adam McKay
Release Date: December 11, 2015
Run Time: 130 Minutes
Country: USA
Rated: R
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
