THE BIG SHORT
MY REVIEW 10/10
“The Big Short” manages to entertain you while making you really, really mad.
And sad. And incredulous. Adam McKay’s take on the financial meltdown of 2008 and the handful of people who saw it coming weaves bitter humor through an educational journey that ultimately ends in tragedy. For all of us. In some ways, it’s a horror story: Many of the culprits are still at large.
The film, based on Michael Lewis’ book, is relentlessly entertaining, with a star-studded cast (Brad Pitt, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling and Christian Bale, among a host of others) effortlessly operating at the top of their game.
The housing market was considered the one rock-solid investment. When a few smart folks started suspecting that it was instead a bubble that might soon burst, supposedly smarter folks told them no. Impossible. Won’t happen. Couldn’t happen.
Why not?
Um, because it never has. And we’re greedy. Go back to your desks and keep selling loans to people, no matter if they’re qualified.
Some people didn’t listen. This movie offers a look at some of them (real and not). And it is an uproarious ride from start to finish.
Dr. Michael Burry (Bale) is a socially backward fund manager who blasts death metal (and plays along with a drum kit in his office). He sees an unsustainable future for housing and starts betting against the market — “shorting” it — with his clients’ money. Bankers are thrilled to cheat him (so they think) and his bosses are exceptionally unhappy, but Burry doesn’t care (at all) about either.
Jamie Shipley (Finn Wittrock) and Charlie Geller (John Magaro) started their own fund while they were still in college. They’ve made a lot of money, but not real money, not in the context of this world. They want to, and they accidentally happen across a report that recommends shorting the housing market. (Except they didn’t. In one of many instances of breaking the fourth wall, the duo tell us this isn’t really how it happened. More on McKay's technique later.)
They know they’re out of their league, so they call in Ben Rickert (Pitt), a granola-crunching mentor who stepped away from the game, but still knows how it’s played.
Then there’s Mark Baum (Carell), a hedge-fund manager with a bad attitude toward banks. He has his reasons, more than the rest, but you get the feeling they only made the bile worse.
The tour guide is Jared Vennett (Gosling), a subprime specialist at Deutsche Bank who is certain things will crash. He’s slick as a weasel (and, in Gosling’s all-in portrayal, hilarious), but so sure of himself he convinces Baum he’s right.
So here we have isolated people who stand to make billions on a bet that only they see as a near-sure thing, even when government and financial “experts” belittle them. This is the stuff of a classic David-and-Goliath tale — except that when Goliath goes down, so does the U.S. economy and millions of people holding bad loans with it. Pitt’s Rickert is the movie’s moral compass, reminding Shipley and Geller they shouldn’t gloat (and dance!) on the backs of others.
Yet in a scenario that has few good guys, our gang comes closest. It’s difficult to root for them when that means rooting against the economy and your own wallet. But McKay, who has worked most famously with Will Ferrell (the “Anchorman” movies, for instance), uses their formidable talents and personalities in such a way that makes it nearly impossible not to.
