January 17, 2016, theater. Based on Michael Lewis’s book, this
creative, funny, terrifying, and infuriating movie chronicles the meltdown of 2007/8 and
the housing bubble, financial skullduggery, and almost universal corruption among the
banks, Wall Street high flyers, the political establishment, and the financial media that led
us lemmings over the cliff into crisis,…and then we bailed them out. Fingers wagged by
our political reps such as H. Clinton, they responded “fuck you, very much.” Stellar
acting from all in this one, although it’s really a “guy” cast. Hedge-fund oddity, Michael
Burry (Christian Bale) figures out that the entire mortgage-backed securities market is a
house of cards built on mountains of crappy mortgages, shorts the position big time with
banks to the tune of billions with the aid of a piece of human vermin (there are so many in
this film). Other marginals, most notably Mark Braun (the ever-more wonderful Steve
Carrell) and his team of broken toys, and Charley Geller and Jaimie Shipley, two
Boulder-boy newbie hedge fund wannabees who rely on their off-the-grid friend, Ben
Rickert (a fine Brad Pitt), get on to what’s happening and take risky short positions as the
banks/government/press collude to try to keep the pot from boiling over. As you may
recall, things don’t go well, except for those playing the short game, and even they learn
their successes come at the expense of the devastation of millions of lives. Sadly, the
perps are still running the show. The film uses playful means to simplify the financial
terms and arcane financial instruments and casino-like insanity that emerged. I wish
they’d moved a bit beyond the Street and these instruments into the destruction of
controls endorsed by some Dems (oh no, Mr. Bill!) and the GOP with the death of Glass-
Steagall but you can only do so much in a film. They do take us into the neutered SEC. I
saw a neighbor down the block after I came home, and he said the film left him feeling
like he needed a drink. I felt like I wanted to blow the whole thing up