O Mago das Mentiras

I was somewhat surprised by this biopic, since I'm well-acquainted with the modern Ponzi scheme story and the $65 Billion ripoff committed at the private investment firm. But even for those familiar with the general story, the documentary film provides a fascinating portrait of the Madoff family and the key characters. Overall it reminds me of an epic Greek tragedy.

The principal crime committed by Bernie Madoff is clearcut. Officially, Madoff run a phenomenal hedge fund, but in reality it was just one big hoax and pyramid investment scheme. All ROIs were fictitious and existing investors were paid by the money provided by subsequent investors. Aside from defrauding rich individuals of European royalty, Madoff took advantage of the fact that he as a jewish investor had excellent contacts to other wealthy American jews, which allowed him to swindle countless of the latter of all their retirement savings. All in all, in the end it led to countless tragedies and suicides on both continents.

The financial thriller behind it has been well-told by previous accounts, particularly 'No One Would Listen' by Harry Markopolos (i.e. the financial analyst struggled to expose the fraud for many years). It's also true that the ramifications would have been much more limited if the SEC would have done their job properly.

However, what this biopic does is following Bernie Madoff and the effects of the exposure on his own family, i.e. particularly his wife Ruth and his two adult sons. It seems as his family was completely unaware of the fraud and the movie does a good job in explaining how his sons never got the information from their dominating father. Later, when it all blew up the fraud also wreaked havoc on the lives of his wife and sons.

In the end, it was all for nothing. The family members would lived longer and happier lives without massive fraud committed by the Bernard. While the portrait of him is by no means completely unsympathetic, he remains seemingly oblivious even to this day to the devastation he caused in so many lives, including to those nearest to him.

The main roles played by Robert de Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer are brilliant, but also the less-known actors playing his two sons.

I've saw a lot of reviews that is saying the movie doesn't have character driven, it's boring, no thriller, and etc. Well, of course the movie won't be anything exciting as this is a docdrama. This movie was made for people needing to remember when investing their money or being responsible with other people's money and not committing the crime of fraud.

The actors portray their characters are just fine and might say right down to their appearance. The story starts just when Madoff revealed to the whole family that his investment was a ponzi scheme and also the gradual downfall of both his son. And shows the impact of how one man completely destroyed not his family, but thousands of business, and decimated the people who trusted him. Given that Madoff was a household name for anything the economy, this is something the boomers, GenX, millennials need to learn when especially investing their money.

Just a side note, this movie was made in 2017 so this covers both Mark sad death where he couldn't take it and Andrew dying from cancer. Madoff and his sister died around 2022.

If you're going to watch this movie, keep an open mind and don't expect to be on the edge of your seat, this isn't an entertainment movie, but a document of what this man did to his family and the people who trusted him.

Richard Dreyfuss claims first portrayal of this monster, but he made Bernard out to be somewhat approachable, as he talked through the fourth wall and joked about the art of selling a scam. He was good but too likable. DeNiro is one of our great acting treasures and his take is nothing nice at all. In fact, it is impossible to like this man. He is evil here, and while one can have some sympathy for Ruth and her sons, the entire tragedy, almost out of Shakespeare, is well done. It bounces around a bit to the past and present, but easy to follow and under the direction of Barry Levinson, moves smartly. But don't watch this if you want a positive evening - hard film indeed. Shot of whiskey portrayal of a monster.

The Wizard of Lies chronicles the infamous Wall Street meltdown that was Madoff's Billion Dollar Ponzi scheme in Barry Levinson's woefully flawed but still engaging film. Starring Robert De Niro and Michelle Pffeifer, The Wizard of Lies features a strong cast of seasoned actors that give their best on screen. De Niro particularly is very strong here and gives his best performance in close to a decade. However, the film suffers from a broken and jumbled script that leaves for a somewhat confusing watch.

The film begins with an interview between Madoff and the subsequent author of his unofficial biography. He begins telling the story at the end of the meltdown on the eve of his arrest and starts from there. From here on out, we're told the story in chunks and pieces, from one perspective to another and totally abandons all formality regarding coherent storytelling. Instead, Levinson creates a deeply personal character study that paints Madoff as a sociopath and a white collar criminal mastermind who would rather blame the victim than himself. While it is engrossing to see De Niro as Madoff, it is barely enough to sustain its bloated runtime.

The film is engrossing to watch. There's no denying it but as the minutes ticked by, it all started to feel redundant. It was more so just dragging the entire Madoff family through hell for the remaining hour of the film and it becomes exhausting after awhile. In a way it was very much a Greek tragedy of epic proportions that just didn't seem to end and by the time it decided it wanted to, you were already checked out 10 minutes prior. Despite this, the ending is satisfying for those wanting to see karma at its best or a tragedy at its worst, whatever way you want to look at it.

Overall, The Wizard of Lies is a missed opportunity more so than not. While it is great to see De Niro and Pfeiffer in top forms, it would have been nice to get a more coherent script from a story that literally writes itself. While anyone expecting a film in the vein of The Big Short will be let down by this, The Wizard of Lies benefits from being a deep character study that shines a (small) light of one of the most tragic mysteries of the 2008 financial crisis.

... is the lesson I took away from the Bernie Madoff story, even before I saw this film. Think about this - Bernie Madoff is serving 150 years, and his earliest release date is 2039. Charles Manson has been getting regular parole hearings since the 1990s. Who is more dangerous? A better question is who is more dangerous to the plutocracy.

The whole story is basically done in flashback after Madoff is incarcerated and is being interviewed by a reporter. This film takes the approach of assuming that the wife and sons knew nothing until Bernie told them right before he was arrested. If there is anything the Bernie Madoff story would teach you, it is "Don't steal from the very rich". The movie emphasized all of the little people who lost everything to the Ponzi scheme, but there were enough people with enough money left over - as in hundreds of millions - that they could hire attorneys and even claw back money from people who withdrew all of their money before Bernie went bust, even though they knew nothing of the scheme. Compare that to what happened to the banksters who swindled the entire nation - which was absolutely nothing, or Enron, where the Bush administration had to practically be shamed into prosecuting the executives who swindled investors. To date about 70% of the money Bernie Madoff swindled has been recovered, with "small" investors - those that invested less than a million - being made completely whole.

Anyways, back to "The Wizard", which doesn't mention any of this. DeNiro was terrific as a guy who decided to keep his swindling secret to himself - and one smarmy associate played by Hank Azaria. Michelle Pfeiffer as Ruth Madoff almost stole the show from DeNiro as a woman who can't deal with being ostracized and hated for something she had nothing to do with. She wonders aloud how she got to be almost 70 and never learned to do anything for herself. De Niro's Madoff is shown as being able to compartmentalize how he is stealing from investors, many of whom are family and friends, encouraging those at the end to put in huge amounts of money to keep the scheme afloat in the wake of the 2008 crash, which is ultimately what did him in, and somehow sees taking what is left of his ill gotten gains and distributing it to his family and "a few loyal employees" before he turns himself in as "noblesse oblige" not just more theft, which it was.

Hints to Madoff's personality are in the little scenes. He is very stoic about being the world's biggest and most brazen thief caught to date, but he does get animated about a dirty dish and the way lobster is served at a society dinner he is hosting.

There is one particularly odd scene for Turner Classic Movie fans. At one point, while Bernie is under house arrest, Bernie and his wife decide to commit suicide in "a nice way" using Ambien and a bunch of other pharmaceuticals they have around the house. It doesn't work - they wake up the next morning. But as they lay in bed expecting to die, who pops up on the TV screen they are watching but the recently deceased Robert Osborne and TCM with him introducing Judy Garland singing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas". What an odd touch. I didn't even think anybody at HBO even knew that TCM existed.