Directed by:
Adam McKayCinematography:
Barry AckroydComposer:
Nicholas BritellCast:
Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Brad Pitt, Marisa Tomei, Finn Wittrock, Max Greenfield, Melissa Leo, Rafe Spall, Hamish Linklater, Byron Mann (more)Plots(1)
In 2005, eccentric San Jose-based money manager and heavy-metal music enthusiast Michael Burry (Christian Bale) studies thousands of individual loans bundled into highly rated mortgage bonds and makes a startling discovery: The financial products are loaded with delinquent home loans certain to default over the next few years. While Wall Street bankers and government regulatory agencies ignore this ticking time bomb, Burry invents a financial instrument called the credit default swap in order to "short" the booming housing market — much to the dismay of his hedge fund's owners and investors. When slick young Wall Street banker Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling) catches wind of Burry's strategy, he uses a tower of tumbling Jenga blocks to persuade hot-tempered hedge-fund manager Mark Baum (Steve Carell) that he too should invest millions in credit default swaps. Initially skeptical, Baum and his contentious team of wise-cracking young analysts (Jeremy Strong, Hamish Linklater and Rafe Spall) undertake their own investigation. Researching the housing market in Florida, they interview glib mortgage brokers who routinely obtain loans for grossly under-qualified home buyers and a strip-club dancer who's made zero-down-payment purchases of multiple properties. Meanwhile, 20-something money managers Jamie Shipley (Finn Wittrock) and Charlie Geller (John Magaro) also stumble upon the housing-market bubble. Hoping to break into the financial big leagues, they're distressed to find their $30 million fund falls almost $1.5 billion short of the requirements needed for a seat at the grownups' table. So they enlist banker-turned-environmental-doomsayer Ben Rickert (Brad Pitt), who uses his connections to help them make their own bet against Wall Street. By the time the market finally crashes in 2008, these contrarian investors will make billions yet will be forever changed by their experience. But while the financial institutions whose reckless behavior caused the problem are bailed out by U.S. taxpayers, millions of Americans lose their homes, their jobs and their retirement savings in an economic catastrophe whose effects are still being felt today. (Paramount Pictures)
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Reviews (18)
A screenwriting masterclass. A fantastic slap in the face of the greedy capitalist system of hard-core, savage financial jungle led by scummy Gordon Geckos, an economy without regulation and feedback controls. No other film in the last 10 years has shown better how the invisible hand of the market is ripping our asses off, that a few individuals can profit handsomely from your misery thanks to the greedy policies of the banks, that we are somehow to blame for everything, thanks to our indifference, and that everything will be borne financially by the common folk of the middle and lower classes. And as the closing credits show, history unfortunately repeats itself and will continue to repeat itself as long as man lives.
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Drowned in their own ambitions. The creators want so much to be the authors of a gripping wake-up call that they are almost unwatchable at their core. All the economic ranting lacks the bigger dramatic arc that propelled, for example, The Wolf of Wall Street, which the screenwriters obviously adore (evidenced not least by the ubiquitous and overly aggressive satire). Some personal stories make brief appearances here too, but due to the dilution of attention among the dozens involved, they vanish into oblivion. I understand that if you're going to discuss economics and mortgages for over two hours in a hundred and one different ways, we will have to immerse ourselves in professional terminology, but we still didn't really need that many. The constant dissection of more and more future financial catastrophes is downright tiring in the final act, it doesn't move the plot forward and merely redirects it into a screenwriter's twist it has already taken several times before. It's been a while since I was last this bothered over actors (in this case, the chameleonic Christian Bale and explosive Steve Carell) performing at full steam without managing to interest me in the consequences of their characters' actions.
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Can a two-hour lesson in pre-crisis economics, where CDOs are constantly shortened and there is swapping, be dynamic, emotional and fun? A very big bet on uncertainty, but surprisingly yes - a great masterclass of editing, music dramaturgy, (detailed) directing of actors and, of course, the glass eye of Christian Bale... Monetary shots right from the start of the year, write the mortgage in the name of your pooch, buy seeds, invest in water and listen to METALLICA. And have your colon rinsed out regularly. Nothing ends, moving on...
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If you have a problem even doing a regular tax return, you're going to get lost in the terminology, and that’s even if Margot Robbie fully gets out of the bathtub. On the other hand, I consider the actors being led with such precision and then having a hundred-and-thirty-minute conversation edited into such a dynamic whole (which is not boring, even if you don't really understand it in the finale) a unique demonstration of directorial skills. This is a decent improvement from the director of shallow comedies.
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For me, the plot of The Big Short revolves too much around mortgages and banks. It lacks the playfulness and lightheartedness of The Wolf of Wall Street, which would be entertaining even if you saw it in Chinese. When the final credits informed us of “Where are they now” in text only, without photos of the characters, the names weren’t enough for me to know who these people were. But the actors were great, and I was the most surprised by Steve Carell, who seems to be transitioning from light comedies into character acting.
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