daniel cohen looks at the all-star financial thriller …
Plot: Set at the start of the most recent financial crisis. The film centers on an investment bank that has just undergone massive lay-offs, including a high level risk management employee, Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci). Dale gives his most recent project to one of his younger team members (Zachary Quinto), who discovers startling projections that could mean disaster for the firm, as well as the rest of the financial world.
With a good cast assembled, and a thoroughly engaging first half, it’s a shame I kept losing interest as the film went on. The subject matter is stretched out to the point of being repetitive. For a movie about trading and financial uncertainty, they manage to infuse a lot of personality into the characters as they are fairly engaging. Some of the characters just don’t work though, and I found myself saying, ‘Can we get back to the interesting people?’ And that’s how I feel about this film as a whole: it’s inconsistent.
What I did appreciate about this movie is that I don’t know jack about financial projections, historical volatility levels, or whatever, but that’s okay. The drama is still compelling, because you care about how this affects the characters, and not so much what is affecting them. Although I would imagine you would have a greater appreciation for this film if you have a great knowledge of the material.
The first half is pretty damn good. I love Quinto’s character Peter Sullivan, who’s the first guy to discover this potentially devastating problem, as he sits in his office alone and in the dark, like the calm before the storm. Quinto is always fascinating as an actor. My favorite part to this movie is when everyone gets informed for the first time. It’s late at night, and it just hits them like a freight train. I love all the personalities and age levels that are brought into this. You got Sullivan (Quinto), the young genius, Seth (Penn Badgley), his very young, and barely out of college buddy, their boss Will (Paul Bettany), the cocky senior level trader, and then of course the old level-headed veteran Sam played by Kevin Spacey, who gives my favorite performance in the film. Every time he makes a speech to his department, it’s always riveting.
The film has so many great moments, including when big CEO John Tuld (Jeremy Irons) flies in on an emergency helicopter, calling everybody to the conference room in the middle of the night. My favorite moment is when Sullivan, who’s practically an entry level employee, has to explain to the big boss what’s going on in front of everyone. This would be the equivalent to some random Stormtrooper discovering a design flaw in the Death Star, and he has to explain it in person to the Emperor. It was really a gut wrenching scene, and Quinto nails it, and it’s directed flawlessly by J.C. Chandor, who also wrote the film.
The film has a lot of these moments, where it’s two or three characters sharing personal stories that veer away from the main plot. Sometimes it works, like when Will is talking to Seth and Sullivan about how $2.5 million can go quickly. I even liked Bettany’s performance as Will, and he’s an actor I don’t usually gravitate towards. But other times these scenes are a real detriment to the film. As much as I like Stanley Tucci’s performance, his character shares a moment with Will about what he did before he got into the financial world and it’s just not that interesting. You know what the point of the story is going to be, but he takes forever to get there. It’s repetitive.
Speaking of repetitive, that’s a huge issue for this movie. When the CEO makes his decision of how he’s going to alleviate the firm’s problem, it comes in the middle of the film. There’s a huge chunk of the movie where other characters are trying to convince Spacey’s character Sam to go along with the decision, which raises plenty of moral questions. It’s clear what Sam is going to do, but it’s so dragged out, the rest of the movie just isn’t as compelling as the first half. And similar to this problem, the end features a big speech by the CEO to Sam, and it’s once again, long and repetitive. It wants to have a big impact, but it’s just lost on you because it’s rehashing the same thing for five minutes.
There are also a lot of characters that just aren’t very interesting. Demi Moore plays Sarah Robertson, the head of Risk Management, and I felt her character to be a complete waste of time, adding nothing to the story. There’s also Simon Baker, who plays Jared Cohen, Sam’s boss. I think we’re supposed to dislike him and feel he’s incompetent, but he barely has a personality or presence to even feel these things.
The acting and first half make this a really solid movie, but it could have left more of an impact with me if it was edited down, and they limited screen time for a couple characters. But all in all, if you make a movie about the financial crisis, and are able to entertain me, that’s really saying something.
Rating: 7 out of 10 (Good)
