Margin Call (2011)

Lots of well known actors, yet as most of us know, that isn't always the ingredient for a great movie. This one went a step further, and gifted us with a great story as well.Basically, over a period of more or less 24 hours, you see the inner machinations of a business run by people you may see every day ... who I'd like to think are nothing like real people (but know better). People who deal in gauging the value of, and buying and selling trades and commodities, as easy as they gauge the value of .... and then use or discard, other people.It is taut, purposefully kept at an even pace, and mostly, it is REALLY well acted by most everyone in front of the camera.The reason for my spoiler warning, and why I didn't give it a straight 10, was that as hackneyed or candy-coated as it would have been, I SO would have preferred an ending where Tucci's character, "got his" by having schemed the entire thing up and forcing them into collapse. That would have made me smile for days. Let's face it though, having been loosely based on the market chaos of 2008, and more so, based on the real world of trading and back room deals, who am I to have expected a happy ending for the guy?Lastly, in going through other reviews here, I can't help but think about how different we all are, and how some people understood and could appreciate such a well presented glimpse into board rooms everywhere (not just Wall Street, but across America in the buildings of every large American corporation today), and how others just didn't get it, understand, or care.

I work in unrelated industries in NYC (first UN, now econ growth) and was blogging on NYC development from 2005 and wrote posts on the fairly obvious growing storm.The film has a beautiful look, pacing, casting, acting, gripping story, what appear to be the main thrusts are all there. But three are not, that I could see, and would have made for an 11 if they were.First, the great underlying crime and real victims. The crime is what the Countrywide Mortgage Company under Angelo Mozilo was up to, extending mortgages initially at low payments to poorer folks, way too many of them Hispanic or Black, and then jacking up the rates after around 5 years, thus causing giant waves of defaults and foreclosures on millions of homes. Treasury Secretary Mnuchin was in this game too. He foreclosed on a 90 year old woman over 27 cents and over 50,000 in total. The toxic sub-prime "paper" that resulted (these mortgages bundled with more highly rated mortgages) was the cancerous cause of the situation seen in the film. Merrill Lynch/Bank of America were forced to buy Countrywide as the cost of their being kept alive; Bear Sterns and Lehman Brothers (the models for this film) had less luck. Google this 2016 article in the New York Times for more. "Countrywide Mortgage Devastation Lingers as Ex-Chief Moves On".Second, it was widely known from 2000 on that the derivatives market was a house of cards. MOZILO HIMSELF SAID SO!! Around 2003. The mentality in the banks was "So what? We are smart enough to be the first out the door."The spark that started the race to get out was the property market flattening out around 2006, as seen by a whole lot of quants (who often did warn the deaf ears higher up.) Third, the regulators were asleep at the wheel. Are they mentioned in the film? It was a bit hard to miss them, they dont work in an ivory tower in Washington. They are embedded in every bank! But they are atoms and the whole gestalt was not being seen.

Shame films such as this doesn't score big box office figures. I have read the reviews of a few who state the film is boring because the script is too intelligent. to those I say the film is based on the financial crash. It shows how a risk analyst figured out how high leverage had exposed the company to greater risk. We can see what happens when the first companies had figured their risk. The aggressive trading is insightful as it shows the amount of money they are willing to loose on every trade due to high risk. So the film will of course require some general sense of economics and finance. Again its a shame it didn't gather higher box office.

A waste of time. Such a great cast, but what a BORING story. The writing is snooze-inducing, and the direction, well - a failure. My mind was drifting about half-way through when I realized I didn't care about any of the characters and that there really is no tension in this film. It is literally a set of characters in search of a plot. The "impending" thing that is about to happen and the collusion between the employees of the firm becomes a murky pond of motivation. The actors barely seem able to get their boring lines out. And when Penn Badgely's character is in the bathroom stall crying, I nearly laughed. I cannot recommend this unless it is for a class called "missed opportunities in film."