I once worked on Wall Street, in firms that looked almost *exactly* like the one depicted in this movie, and among people who were frighteningly like the characters in this movie. I was a lowly programmer; they were traders and mutual fund executives. My job was to try to get information to them as quickly as humanly possible; their job was to analyze the information and find ways to make money from it. This film brought back to me all of the utter soullessness of what it was like to work there. And that was before the bubble burst.
"Margin Call" is about the 24 hours in which the bubble bursts. It starts with a scene I witnessed several times, as a team of HR flunkies are brought in to lay off 80% of the firm's employees. One of them (played excellently by Stanley Tucci), carrying his boxes of personal effects to the elevator, in a last fit of trying to do his job well, hands off a USB key to a junior risk analyst (Zachary Quinto) before he leaves, urging him to look at it. He does, and realizes that the shit is not just about to hit the fan; it hit the fan a couple of weeks earlier, and he is the first to recognize it. He calls his boss, who calls his boss, who calls his boss, and soon -- in the dead of a New York night -- they're all gathered around a conference table trying to decide what to do, now that the End Of The World is upon them. Their solution is *exactly* the one the people I worked with would have come up with -- sell off the company's holdings quickly, before the buyers realize that what they're being sold is worthless. (This actually happened during the 2008 "crisis" that led to the government bailout of people just like the ones in this movie.) Written and directed by J.C. Chandor, whose father was an investment banker, *every moment* of this film "rings true." I've been there in those buildings, and worked with those people. This film couldn't have been more "real" and accurate if they'd taken cameras into the halls of Lehman Brothers itself and let them roll. Dream cast: Kevin Spacey (one of his best performances in years), Paul Bettany, Jeremy Irons (as the CEO whose last name is suspiciously like the Lehman CEO's real name), Zachary Quinto, Penn Badgley, Simon Baker, Mary McDonnell, Demi Moore, and Stanley Tucci. Excellent script, excellent dialogue, and a level of high tension that proves that you don't have to be a financial wizard to understand the mechanics of financial wizardry, and the way its wizards (think Saruman and Sauron) think and behave. It is scarily accurate; I have actually *heard* people who make 2-3 million dollars a year "explain" how they spent it all the same way that Paul Bettany does on the rooftop of the building. They had as little real financial worth as the products they were selling to their clueless customers. It was scary. Seeing it all again is even scarier, now that the rest of the world has realized what a house of cards the whole investment industry is. One of the most effective scenes sets Simon Baker and Demi Moore, as two of the highest-ranked and highest-paid executives in the firm, riding in an elevator at 3:00 am, as their staff scrambles to plan a massive selloff of all of the company's holdings the next morning. The selloff all has to happen before 10:15 am, because after that the word will have hit the street that what is being sold is worthless. They are about to ruin the lives of tens of thousands of people and bankrupt the firms of their very customers. But what are the two executives in the elevator talking about? How to cover *their* asses, to make sure they still have a place in what's left of the firm the next day. And they're discussing this while "talking over" a female janitor who is standing between them in the elevator. They're discussing their options candidly, as if the fact that she is there doesn't matter, as if her very *existence* doesn't matter. This was an effective film moment for me, because that is exactly how their firm is going to treat its own customers come morning. I would suggest that seeing this film might overcome any lingering Capitalist tendencies you might have and inspire you to join the Occupy Wall Street protests, except that it's more powerful than that. I found myself looking at this film's remarkably accurate depiction of the executives I used to ride in elevators with by wanting to beat them to death with a club, then bring them back to life, and do it again. Several times. This may sound extreme, but it's more humane and more compassionate than what they did to their own customers, every day.
