Margin Call

My wife and I were scrolling through Netflix for something to watch. We went right through Margin Call several times. A couple of times was because it was made in 2011, so a little old. The brief description was not overly attractive and the picture didn't do it justice. We finally watched it when we were semi-desperate.

So wrong to over look it. If you are even marginally interested (yes a slight pun) in finance and the meltdown in 2007-2009, then you must watch it. Very underrated film, well done. If you understand finance even slightly or some of the terms used, then you can intuit some of the action. But even then, you get the jist.

I loved the cast, the dialogue, the meaning of the film. Don't make the mistake we made and scroll right over it. A great watch.

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.

Margin Call is one of those movies that stand out not for what they say, but for how they say it. I care very little for a story about the financial crisis, and for the moral theme involved; but this movie does a very good job in storytelling, so that the story becomes interesting. The idea of focusing on the very first hours of the crisis is very smart. The direction is good, the dialogues are flawless, there's a lot of interesting characters, and the acting from an outstanding cast is fantastic.

The movie "Margin Call" depicts the events that immediately preceded the Financial Crisis in 2008 within a nameless Investment Bank. What I like especially about the movie is the fact that it doesn't try to explain the technical causes of the Financial Crisis but the psychological causes - human failures, which are the real cause for the Crisis: greed, egotism, ignorance. Many scenes in this movie deal with very little dialogue, instead the body language and the unique atmosphere speaks for itself. The ensemble is just brilliant, especially Kevin Spacey and Jeremy Irons.

The movie works solely from inside the nameless firm – apart from minor steps outside. It only portraits the people working inside this company - the "normal world" is completely left out. The effect is a very clever one: The life of these bankers seems totally severed from the outside world, they have no real connection with normal people and seem to – speaking exaggeratingly – lack an understanding of real human values, that there could be more behind life than just maximizing and making money. They are completely left behind in their own world, which somehow got out of control. Even when the imminent truth reveals and the consequences are becoming more clearer, it always feels like they are cut off; there is a scene in a taxi with Quinto and Badgley that underlines this.

But one can also witness the cold-blooded atmosphere in the system itself, where every person could easily be mistaken as a number. A key figure of the film, Eric Dale, who gets sacked in the beginning, is confronted with two managers in a scene like from "Up In The Air". Either are these women robots or have never experienced something like social warmth. One widely held position is that eventually bankers themselves didn't understand their own system and products with Derivatives and Futures, etc. anymore. Almost hilarious, but sadly true is the fact that many people in these companies seem to have no understanding of Economics and just got into their position due to influence or money. When they are sitting in their conference room and discuss the incident, it feels somewhat grotesque.

Although this movie works almost completely without music, the tension is so immense - thanks to the brilliant actors - that one is forced to focus.

I saw this film as part of the Ghent filmfestival 2011. Its announcement promised an inside view in the financial industry, and particularly how it could cause the recent financial crisis. And precisely this is what it did splendidly. I gave it a "very good"mark (5 out of 5) for the public prize competition when leaving the theater.

I particularly liked the way they avoided the techno babble about financial products, from which we all learned the hard way to be paper constructs only, none of these related with things in the real world. The story also clearly illustrates that higher echelons in the financial industry do not under­stand those technicalities either, something we assumed all along but didn't dare to ask for confirmation.

Departing from the very different purposes and backgrounds of the main characters, the story line got us involved in the attempts of each of them to cope with the situation at hand. Though their job motivations may drastically differ from yours and mine, this film had no really distinct good and bad guys.

The main characters were properly introduced in the time-line when logically needed. We got the chance to know each of them, with their own coping behavior in this volatile environ­meant, yet every­one bringing along his own human characteristics. In the process we also saw the golden chains to attach each of them to the company, making it virtually impossible to cut themselves loose from this line of work. We may call it greed, but it is a fact of life that everyone gets used to incoming cash flow, however large and unnecessary it may seem in our eyes. Once being there, it is logical to buy a bigger house and to send kids to expensive schools. After that there is no easy way back, and each one smoothly grows into a life style that is difficult to escape from.

The story line as such is not that important, apart from the fact that it succeeds very well in tying all the above together. It also maintains a constant tension all the time. I consider both aspects an achievement in itself, since nothing really happens in terms of dead bodies, physical fights, and chasing cars. Only a few short scenes were shot outside, but all the rest happened in a standard office building. The final outdoor scene was a bit unexpected (I won't spoil it for you), but it shows that even bankers are human after all.