The Crooked E: The Unshredded Truth About Enron

Having had ambitions since a being young man, Brian Cruver is fired up when he gets a desk at Enron – one the largest companies in America. After taking a bit of time to come to terms with the approach and working style of the place, Cruver quickly settles in and makes a name for himself with some big deals, perhaps being helped a bit by knowing Mr Blue, one of the top men in the company.

With Kenneth Lay dead mere months after being found guilty, the Natwest Three becoming a major political football in UK/US relations and one of the bankers found dead six days after going missing, my interest in the subject was peaked enough to look back on this film from a few years ago. The downside of my timing was that I had already seen the imperfect but vastly superior Smartest Guy in the Room. As a documentary, this other film focuses on developing the main story and presenting it as clearly as possible. It also benefits hugely from having access to the in-house video footage that this film can only dramatise. Conversely this film takes a dramatisation path that means by default it has to focus on the made-up character of Cruver and his story as much as on the story of Enron. To some viewers this will work but I suggest that these people have not seen Smartest Guys.

This film does a so-so job of explaining the story but it is happy to do it in massive jumps and simplifications that don't give you the time to let them sink in more than you need to keep Cruver's story moving forward. It delivers the impact of the story pretty basically as well – having women crying about their lost money etc. The focus on Cruver doesn't really work because you can't shake the feeling (the knowledge) that his story is infinitely less interesting than the wider story of the corporation and its impact on business. It is made weaker by the TVM style delivery which works "best" overdoing the soapy emotion of the tale but cannot cope with the complex case and the wider ramifications. The direction is so-so and the budget limited – although in fairness Smartest Guys used the real offices and real footage, so this can't compare.

The cast are roundly weak, which isn't that much of a surprise. Kane is bland and never convinces no matter what his character is going through. Sure his material isn't that good but his performance is no better. Elizabeth is a "big name" in this film and to the vast majority of us alarm bells will be ringing – she has little to do either way. Dennehy turns in with a poor character that is used to explain things in the place of a decent script and his lack of interest is writ large across his performance. The rest of the cast are so-so at best but few convince and Farrell and Wynne are particularly weak.

Overall this is an entry-level film if you are looking to learn more about power, corporations – much better is Smartest Guys. In the absence of that film this might be worth a look but it is hard to get a lot of value from this very soapy approach. Works as daytime fodder but the truth deserves much, much more than this.

As one of the victims of the whole Enron scandal, my mother forced me to watch this movie with her. How many times can I say awful? The script was so weak, using cliche after cliche. It seems as though the writers pieced this story together with a few articles on Enron. Watching the movie, we honestly were able to complete about half of the one-dimensional characters' lines and thoughts. I realize this was supposedly adapted from a book, but was the book this bad? I don't know what to say. Just terrible. The best thing about the movie? Shannon Elizabeth actually kept her clothes on. Other than that, this movie gets a big fat F.

The Crooked E, The Unshredded Truth About Enron, was based on the true story of an Enron employee, Brian Cruver, the ink hardly dry on his MBA when he came to work for the self-proclaimed "greatest company in the world." He starts out as a wide-eyed innocent and soon becomes seduced by "the dark side of the force," becoming arrogant, deceptive, and greedy, buying a Lexus convertible, a $700 raincoat, and planning a $60,000 wedding, much to the dismay of his down-to-earth fiancee, who eventually leaves him. But as he begins to realize just what is happening there, he quickly becomes disillusioned and, by the time the company has gone belly-up, he has regained his integrity (to the point of destroying a contract that would have badly hurt the client) and his fiancee. This, incidentally, is a departure from the book, as Cruver marries about two months into his short stay at Enron.

Christian Kane has the momentous job of playing Cruver, as he appears in every scene except for a prologue which shows him as a child with "Mr. Blue," Brian Dennehey. He also does the narration and has a brief song while driving his new Lexus. And he does it all with dash and aplomb. If this very handsome, talented young actor, whom the camera loves, is not a superstar in the next couple of years, there is something radically wrong. Tony winner Dennehey is outstanding as an employee with a sad story to tell, and Mike Farrell presents Ken Lay as either an eternal optimist or a bald-faced liar or some of both.

I hope this will eventually come out on video or DVD as it's a keeper.

They probably needed better promo for this movie that made it a bit more clear, that it is a movie about the true life story of Brian Culver, not an overall story about what happened at Enron.

This is from the point of view of one and his experience in the company. I am sure there was much more to his story that could not be fit into the time frome of the length of a movie.

"Anatomy of Greed" (2002) You may want to check it out!

I went into thinking I wasn't going to like it. I wasn't interested in what happened at Enron, but I am a #Kaniac= fan of Christian Kane, so I gave it watch!!

I enjoyed it more than expected! Love Brian Dennehy as well!.

This movie may be a little slow going for people of today (2024) So folks need to take that into consideration when viewing, that it was made in 2003 and the story is based around one man!

Christian Kane as always rocked his role! I highly recommend it!

I had heard so much about the Enron scandel and was interested to see the movie about the in depth scandel of this crooked company that put money abouve the welfare of human beings.

The true story is itself an utter outrage and watching the movie I felt it did capture, at least the feeling of what it was like to be an enron employee and it also managed to convey the idealistic dreams so many had going into the company. It is HARD for me to review this movie for the very reason that I just don't know how accurate and true to life it was. I never worked for Enron or knew anyone who did but I have known people who were motivated by little more then greed in life-still I don't know why there was a love story gone wrong plot going on as well, I don't even know if the main character in this movie actually existed.

And though the movie did show a typical working day in an Enron employee's life I would have liked it to go into more depth about the ramifications of what happened and how it effected so manys' lives in really tragic ways. Of coarse we all know the story but I'd perhaps have liked to see interviews with REAL Enron employees, these incredible people who put so much of their lives into their work and were hurt so badly by individuals whose only motive was money. It is sad, it is tragic and even though I'm not sure about the accuracy of anything about the movie, it was so fast paced and involving, my attention WAS held almost automatically by the movie in general(it's the only movie I've seen on the Enron scandel and it keeps you watching). But I still think some things should have been different and rather then this one guy's relationship with his wife, the movie should have had real life interviews. The movie touched me but something tells me the real life ramifications of the Enron scandel were about quintuple what the movie showed. I would also have liked to have seen what the law was doing to punish the people responsible for this and how some of the people who lost so much were doing now.