Director: Adam McKay
Genre: Biographical Comedy/Drama
Starring: Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Brad Pitt, Marisa Tomei, Melissa Leo
Distributed by: Paramount Pictures
Release Date: December 11, 2015
My Rating: 8.5/10
I've seen, heard and read a lot of explanations about the gigantic financial meltdown and "housing bubble" that hit the United States--and the rest of the world too, for that matter--during the late 2000s. Thanks to graph and statistic-laden explanations from professors in college, documentaries like Inside Job, movies like HBO's Too Big To Fail, or even simply dinnertime reports from my father, who just so happens to work in the banking industry, I've come to grasp the basic understanding of what exactly occurred during this 2008 crisis, as well as its causes and consequences (or lack of consequences).
None of these accounts proved to be as clear or as entertaining as the one presented by Director Adam McKay's (Anchorman, Step Brothers) biographical dramedy, The Big Short, based on Michael Lewis's (The Blind Side, Moneyball) nonfiction book of the same name. The film tells the story of a few visionary guys who essentially bet against the US housing market and the American economy as a whole by 'shorting' bonds, subprime mortgage loans and other types of securities. 'Shorting' refers to selling securities not owned by the seller (borrower) with the belief that the price of that security will eventually decline, thus allowing it to be repurchased at this lower price for a profit. Thus, a new market was created to get a tool for shorting: the market of credit default swap (CDS), a type of financial exchange between a seller and a buyer (lender) that serves as a form of insurance against the defaulting of a loan.
The main players of the betting game: Dr. Michael Burry (Christian Bale), a neurologist turned hedge fund manager of California-based Scion Capital with Asperger's Syndrome and an artificial left eye, who was essentially the first on Wall Street to foresee the bursting of the housing bubble and thus made a profit by throwing over $1 billion of his investors' money into credit default swaps. FrontPoint Capital hedge fund manager Mark Baum (Steve Carell, based on real-life manager Steve Eisman), cynical Deutsche Bank bond trader Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling, based on Greg Lippmann), and jaded former JP Morgan Chase Bank trader Ben Rickert (Brad Pitt, based on Ben Hockett), who worked at the major bank's office in Singapore and was pessimistic about the banking industry.
Vennett approaches Baum about shorting collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), groups of asset-backed securities that are basically a promise to pay investors in a prescribed sequence of 'tranches' or portions based on the cash flow the CDO collects from the pool of assets it owns. Vennett explains to Baum and the rest of his team at FrontPoint that these CDOs have been packaged together and incorrectly assigned very high AAA ratings by agencies like Standard & Poor, which leads the ragtag group of Wall Street hotshots to pull off one of the greatest heists in decades.
Although I have not read Lewis's book, the script (from Mr. McKay and Charles Randolph) is superb, without a doubt. Perhaps what I found most engaging about the film was the inclusion of random celebrity cameos (as themselves) to simplify the explanation of the basic definition and functioning of financial instruments and transactions: from Australian actress Margot Robbie explaining subprime mortgages in a bathtub, to chef and TV personality Anthony Bourdain using seafood to describe CDOs, to pop star Selena Gomez describing 'synthetic' CDOs (essentially CDOs piggy-backing on other CDOs) while playing blackjack in a casino. Yes, you read all of those correctly.
Some may find it patronizing to use celebrities and simple analogies to 'dumb-down' these highly technical concepts, but I found it very fun and refreshing. These lighter scenes provided a more-than-welcome relief from the narration (mostly from Mr. Gosling's character) and conversations between the protagonists, which quite frankly revealed a lot of depressing information about the collapse of the American and world economies. The interspersing of quotes that were not stated but shown across a black screen, both anonymous and from famous folks, also helped to provide straightforward analogies for the crisis.
If celebs like the above three are what it takes for people to pay more attention, then so be it. As Mr. Carell's character tells his wife (Marisa Tomei) over the phone, complaining about how nobody cares about all of this, not even those who know they're being ripped off: "They're being screwed, you know. You know what they care about? They care about the ball game, or what actress just checked into rehab." And he's right. Most people who pass by us everyday may have no involvement with this industry and could not care less about it.
The performances are very sincere and reflect the varying emotions and opinions all of these top bank and hedge-fund leaders expressed during the meltdown. Mr. Carrel proves once again, following his Oscar-nominated role in 'Foxcatcher,' that despite his long resume as a funny man, can also brilliantly tackle much more dramatic roles. He does not shy away from demonstrating the frustration men like his character, and Mr. Pitt's character, felt at the demise of the industry, and more specifically at its lack of honesty and integrity, which Burry talks about in narration form at the end of the film.
Mr. Pitt's scolding of two young, ambitious, twenty-something guys (John Magaro and Finn Wittrock) who celebrate after they realize how much profit they are going to make from the big short operation encapsulates so much about the film: "Do you have any idea what you just did? You just best against the American economy. People are going to lose their homes, their jobs."
Oscar Winner Christian Bale also immerses himself beautifully into the character of the real-life, eccentric, and socially awkward yet oddly likable Michael Burry, the visionary genius who predicted the entire collapse and who did not let anyone, not even his superiors, stop him from believing he was right. His case proves that even the strangest people, with the oddest, out-of place habits like blasting heavy metal, playing with drumsticks, and wearing a t-shirt and no shoes, can be the outsiders we need to bring to light the importance of a severe issue.
The Big Short is now nominated for five Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor for Mr. Bale, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Film Editing.
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