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Flicks - Margin Call Rookie filmmaker J.C. Chandor brings us a scathing film, with a high-powered cast, about a group of investment bankers going into damage control on the eve of the 2008 meltdown by Chris Dashiell - The Film Snob The 2008 Wall Street crash, the effects of which we are all unfortunately living through, was well covered by last year's documentary Inside Job. It was inevitable that we would also see some dramatizations, such as HBO's recent Too Big To Fail. More impressive, however, is Margin Call, a film by rookie writer-director J.C. Chandor. With a minimal budget and an impressive big-name cast, Chandor weaves a tale of a Wall Street investment firm tottering on the brink of disaster right as the economic meltdown begins.
All the action takes place in 24 hours, beginning when the nameless company executes a massive layoff within its risk management division. The head of that division, a weary company veteran played by Stanley Tucci, is unceremoniously dumped, with even his cell phone taken away, but before he leaves he hands a computer file to one of his subordinates, a brilliant young numbers cruncher named Peter Sullivan, played by Zachary Quinto. Sullivan, intrigued by his boss's warning to be careful, stays in the office that night trying to complete the problem begun in the computer file, and uncovers a startling fact—the company's risky investment in subprime mortgage derivatives is about to collapse and bring the entire firm down with it. Through the rest of the long night, and the film, the bad news makes its way up the corporate ladder, to Sullivan's cocky team supervisor, played by Paul Bettany, to his boss, Kevin Spacey, to the firm's feckless manager and his combative assistant, Simon Baker and Demi Moore, and finally to the arrogant big shot CEO, the boss of them all, played by the riveting and scene-stealing Jeremy Irons.
If this were David Mamet, you would have a lot of over-the-top satire and profanity-laced tirades, but Chandor plays it closer to the vest. This is a world where people suppress their emotions even when their world is falling apart, and the selfish, cutthroat calculating style of this elite class of financial pirates is for the most part low-key. The humor is very dry and seasoned with a strong dose of alienation.
Bettany is excellent as a mid-level climber who is just human being enough for one to like, but also gives a revealing speech about how high-rollers shouldn't care about the effect of all this financial mess on so-called normal people. Spacey has the biggest part, and his character struggles between what's left of his conscience and the need to still be standing when everything else falls apart. Best of all is Jeremy Irons as an absolutely ruthless, self-confident and amoral type, a performance that never lapses into caricature.
The special virtue of the film is that it really helps you understand the mindset of the kind of people involved in the Wall Street debacle without either turning them into monsters or making them seem like nice guys. Margin Call is a well-written and expertly modulated chamber piece about the soulless place that self-interest can eventually bring us to.