(2008 HOLIDAY TEAM)Having been the victim of corporate downsizing more than once, I was immediately engaged with this propulsive 2011 corporate drama from the beginning as Stanley Tucci's character, a seasoned risk management executive named Eric Dale, is told in a coldly indifferent manner that he is being laid off after 19 years with the same unnamed Wall Street firm. It's a piercing yet dramatically economical scene that perfectly summarizes how bloodless the corporate world can be, and in first-time writer/director J.C. Chandor's effort set on the eve of the 2008 financial crisis, it is very cold indeed with 80% of the trading floor being let go. As Dale is escorted out of the building, he hands a flash drive to his prodigious assistant Peter Sullivan and tells him to take a look at it and "Be careful."Once Sullivan analyzes the data, he realizes the universal gravity of Dale's warning that the firm is so over-committed to underwater mortgage-backed securities that the total potential loss exceeds the firm's total market capitalization value. In other words, the projected scenario means the firm will soon owe a lot more than it's worth, and the market will be on the verge of an apocalyptic meltdown. What happens after this discovery is a series of sharply intense clandestine confrontations with each level of higher-ups recognizing the ramifications of the inevitable disaster, each one far more nuanced in character than we are used to seeing in films from Oliver Stone about greed and immorality. Blessedly, Chandor doesn't stoop to the customary stereotypes in this corporate cage match, but what he does manage is capture the moral compass underneath each player by way of a cast that really delivers the goods with powerfully implosive performances.
Zachary Quinto (Star Trek) is initially at the center of the plot as Sullivan and performs well enough in the constraining, semi-heroic role, but the veterans really stand out here beginning with Kevin Spacey, who effectively plays against type as Sam Rogers, a genuine company man, the seen-it-all head of the trading team who rallies what's left of the trading floor with corporate brio but then faces his own cross to bear struggling to commandeer a fire sale of worthless assets dumped on unsuspecting clients. The other standout is Jeremy Irons, who masterfully resuscitates the cool cunning of his Claus von Bulow from Reversal of Fortune as the acerbically survivalist CEO John Tuld. He handily controls the boardroom scene with cutting humor and hostile precision. One of the film's more pleasant surprises is Demi Moore in cool, brisk form as Sarah Robertson, the top risk officer and lone female executive who knows her career is at stake with the discovery of this folly. Tucci is excellent in his smallish role as Dale and gets to show off his resigned character's engineering aptitude with a brief monologue about building a bridge.
Comparatively less impressive but playing their more predictable roles fitfully are Penn Badgley as Sullivan's younger, overtly money-obsessed colleague Seth Bregman; Paul Bettany as Dale's nihilistic, snake-oil salesman of a boss, Will Emerson; and Simon Baker as the most morally despicable executive of the bunch, Jared Cohen. Mary McDonnell has a brief and frankly unnecessary scene as Rogers' ex-wife, and I didn't even recognize the usually hilarious Broadway personality Susan Blackwell as the hatchet woman in the opening scene. There are a few flaws with Chandor's observant screenplay, for example, the overly analogous scenes of Rogers dealing with his dying dog and a rooftop scene that plays up Emerson's nihilistic nature too predictably. In addition, some scenes play either too murkily or too clinically to achieve the precise dramatic effect they should. I think the absence of a musical score also contributes to the sterility of the proceedings. However, as a first-time filmmaker, Chandor more than impresses with his deft handling of such a zeitgeist moment with the Occupy Wall Street protests gaining understandable momentum right now.
If you've never been a manager in a serious company, it might not appeal to you. As an ex-software company exec, I can say it felt real to me. I found the story exciting, because I could relate to the characters and their understated pain. Many things are shown, rather than stated. For example, they work all night long in their suits, but no one ever talks about going home, or the hours, etc. If you've been in a management crisis and experienced a long hellish night, you'll feel this movie in your bones.
The best part was the placement of the viewer in the shoes of the company execs. Imagine your place of work for 20 or 30 years going down in flames around you. If you are a teacher, imagine the school is going to close at the end of the week forever if you make the wrong choice tonight. Every kid in your school will never be educated if you fail. The only way to possibly save yourself and your students is to lie your ass off. That is not a fun place to be, and that's the tension behind the film.
On a final note, I didn't sense an overt political viewpoint from the filmmakers. I didn't feel this was a hit-piece on Wall Street or anyone else. It was dramatized and probably shrunken down in time-scale, but quite believable. I found that refreshing.Having been a wall streeter for most of my professional life I can say that this film gets it right it gets right the firing, it gets right the way in which people are so disconnected, so self serving, it gets the way many young misguided college graduates think of wall street. I started working in the 1990s on wall street at a time when Risk Management meant something and at a time when firms like JP Morgan out of 23 wall was leading risk management with risk metrics and most of us coming out of great Universities with technical degrees were welcomed, albeit heralded as the saviors of the new age of finance. Sadly we believed it and so did the rest of the world including key people in the administration "Summers" defended our new financial engineering products so much so that even in light of the near collapse of LTCM they said that we had it right. Why do we believe that we can dilute ourselves? Mass delusion I say. And I say it again we must be mass deluded. As an insider working in Private Equity who never lost his job after the financial crisis I have to say three things. One that the movie I just saw is very accurate narrating what did happen,as to which firm it was portrayed in the film? well that I wont say, not because I cant say but because it isnt for me to say but what I can say is that it isnt the obvious one it is not Lehman. Second is that the movie reflects on something that it is amiss among our society which is the lack of what we call Humanity and common sense. Third is that I totally understand why people feel the way they do about us wall streeters, we have not lived up to the expectations or rather, we have. Lastly I can say that we all have to live up to a higher standard one where we think of the better choices that we have to make and i hope that this film gets people to thing about what those choices are. No one wants to go home after a long career or a short one feeling that they have just sold their soul or realize that they did a long time ago. Finance and Econ are important parts or our society The management of limited resources is a key function for our leaders to help us perform and us too. When doing so, we should not over rely on esoteric financially engineered products we should challenge those who structure them to create products that truly benefit us in the long term, and in order to do so we need to think Long term, just as men like Steve Jobs did when he thought about innovation beyond him, hence the title of this review, Long Term Capital Management LLC. Its margin call time....
Read Best Reviews of Margin Call (2011) Here
I found this movie's finely crafted character studies riveting. All the characters found personal reasons to collectively participate in the destruction of the American economy for years to come. Although the action covers a single day, the movie makes it clear the collective blindness to anything but personal gain covered years.Want Margin Call (2011) Discount?
I saw a Kevin Spacey interview where he claims the practices in "Margin Call" are still going on today. This review contains some early plot synopsis for those who may have some trouble with the Wall Street jargon. The film appears to be about a fictional investment firm at the start of the 2008 financial crisis.The drama opens with an investment bank downsizing. An outside agency has been hired to do the layoffs. We see sad scenes of people being tapped and escorted out. This company laid off much of its middle level management layers and kept the worker bees. Sam Rogers (Kevin Spacey), a big boss is visibly upset. He has a bottle of Pepto-Bismo on his desk. His Chocolate Lab is dying. Spacey is spending $1,000 a day to keep his dog alive. While he appears to be reviving his role in "Horrible Bosses" we later find out he is our closest thing to a good guy.
One of the laid off mid-level bosses, Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci) hands off a thumb drive to Seth Bregman (Zachary Quinto) who burns the midnight oil going over the data. Bregman panics at the numbers. The volatility index (VI) indicates the company will incur losses that will greatly exceed its total assets. The firm goes into panic mode. The company holds bad assets known as derivatives which is nothing more than pieces of various risk mortgages lumped together. If they attempt to dump them all, without buying, people will suspect something is up and won't buy their assets. If they wait too long to dump them, the fear is someone else will figure out what is going on and beat them to the punch. They are between the proverbial "rock and a hard place."
This sets the wheels in motion as the CEO is notified that the company may collaspe.
Penn Badgley views their job as legalized gambling. They make $250,000 a year crunching numbers and think their bosses who make $2.5 million a year are obscenely overpaid. Jeremy Irons plays the stereotypical CEO who doesn't seem knowledgeable about their product.
Now in spite of the fact this is dealing with issues beyond most people's lives, everyone one of us knows the results of an economy crash. The actors did a superb job holding our interest in the film as each person handles the stress differently.
What will the investment firm do to survive? As things get ugly, the drama becomes more interesting.
F-bomb, no sex or nudity. Rare film that has strippers and Demi Moore in which she is not one of them.
Save 52% Off
No comments:
Post a Comment