Wonderful Movie

Good start, but then it gets ruined

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Fascinating and well-told tale of a corporate melt-down with excellent ensemble cast, especially the always-appreciated Tucci as risk manager and Spacey as floor boss. I'm not going to say much more since the one positive change to Imdb is no more ten line rule. The story and the characters are textured and have a very realistic feel to them. It was only after seeing this 1 1/2 times that I realized the real-life context but that's not the point of the picture. It's about corporate lowest common denominator stupidity and chilling selfishness.

I had read good reviews of this film, and combined with the subject matter which interested me, I was expecting to enjoy it a lot. To be honest I was a little disappointed. The whole thing just came off as rather flat and "bloodless" to me. I guess "bloodless" is perhaps what the movie makers were going for in a sense -- depicting the rather cold-blooded reality of a big financial corporation on Wall street. I just could not especially get excited by the action of a bunch of people in suits grimly talking about what they seemed to all see as a foregone conclusion, the moves they would have to make, etc. That said, I do feel that the film has an important message at least: through so clearly depicting the utterly immoral (or better, should I say "Amoral"- a world that where it seems "morality" is not even as something real), the utterly non-moral world of Finance Capitalism. A bunch of people trying to make money because they just believe that is the only thing there is to do.

J.C. Chandor's Margin Call sustains a laser focused, wilfully meticulous look at the days leading up to the 2008 financial crash, showing us life within one wall street office building during a nervy period which now no doubt is remembered as the calm before the storm. Various characters in different positions of the hierarchy anxiously brace themselves as the jobs begin to get cut and the dread looms towards them like the inevitable rising sun at dawn. It's set all in one afternoon and night, compacting a far reaching event which spanned years into the microcosm of a single 24 hour window, a tactic which sits through the larger world implications and brings it in for something a little more intimate. Zachary Quinto plays a young trader who discovers a rip in the lining of the economic infrastructure, a precursor to the eventual disaster. I'm not being purposefully vague and cryptic with that, I just don't personally understand all the exact ins and outs of what went wrong back then, and having not the slightest knowledge of wall street jargon, that's the best I can do. He brings this knowledge to his superiors who react in varying ways. Kevin Spacey is a disillusioned big shot who sees his life going off the rails alongside the country's market, and mopes in his swanky office. Paul Bettany is a cocky young upstart who uses casual indifference to shade the bruises he's got from knowing what will happen. Demi Moore is a company head who looks out for herself while others in the company. Jeremy Irons provides scant moments of humour as a bigwig fixer who arrives on a chopper to set things straight, or at least assess the damage. The best work of the film comes from Stanley Tucci (surprise, surprise) as a jilted employee who has been laid off in the confusion, and is seething about it. His melancholic monologue about what it takes to propel America's industry and economy forward resonates with a humanity that cuts deep. The film ticks along with a pace that's both measured and swift, with little time for introspect, yet showing it to us anyway amid the chaos. Watch for appearances from Penn Badgley, Al Sapienza, Simon Baker and Mary McDonnell as well. Chandor let's the proceedings thrum with an inevitability that hangs in the air as the promise of the impending crisis, a feeling that serves to impart not why it happened, not how it happened, but the fact that it did happen, to each and every individual person who was affected, as opposed to the country as a whole.

"Margin Call" deals with big, multi-million firm and countless anonymous little fishes who are satisfied with their jobs until disaster strikes. In space of 36 hours the whole empire collapses and we follow what happens to individuals involved in all this - what is the most interesting is how firmly movie keeps our attention although there is nothing in sense of "action" (no explosions, overturned cars, bullets or computer animation), we are glued to the screen by sheer power of story and presence of strong acting. From a recently fired Stanley Tucci who stumbled upon discovery that would alarm his young colleague (Zachary Quinto), to cold blooded executive Simon Baker and finally the biggest fish Jeremy Irons (who arrives in the middle of the night by helicopter and orders immediate meeting) acting is superb and there is hardly a wrong step in a movie - these people are not sentimental when it comes about outside world and what will happen to others, they are concerned about their own wealth and how will all of this affect them. There is a excellent scene where Baker and Demi Moore bicker in the elevator completely ignoring cleaning lady who is in the middle - for them she is invisible, she is perfect example of outside world they don't care about and I doubt they would even notice if she dropped dead there and than. Not so sure about Moore and why exactly she was needed for this movie except for her name power but Jeremy Irons brings everything on completely different level because his presence is so hypnotizing and yes scary, that he completely overshadows everybody else around - we sense this is important man who is completely above other mortals and even when everybody else is scared to death because of collapse of financial empire, Irons stands unconcerned because his own wealth is such that he can just shrug it off as something natural and cyclical. Jeremy Irons is God.