The Big Short
Directed by: Adam McKay
Written by: Adam McKay and Charles Randolph - Based on the book The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis
Starring: Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling, Steve Carell, Brad Pitt, Finn Whitrock, John Magaro, Marisa Tomei, Rafe Spall, Hamish Linklater, Jeremy Strong, Tracy Letts, Adeparo Oduye, Margot Robbie, Anthony Bourdain, Selena Gomez, Melissa Leo
Biography/Drama - 130 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 19 Dec 2015
Written by: Adam McKay and Charles Randolph - Based on the book The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis
Starring: Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling, Steve Carell, Brad Pitt, Finn Whitrock, John Magaro, Marisa Tomei, Rafe Spall, Hamish Linklater, Jeremy Strong, Tracy Letts, Adeparo Oduye, Margot Robbie, Anthony Bourdain, Selena Gomez, Melissa Leo
Biography/Drama - 130 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 19 Dec 2015
The world economy almost collapsed and nobody went to jail. The big banks, the cause of the disaster, lost billions upon billions of dollars and Average Joe lost his job and pension. The government bailed out the banks while the blue-collar victims lost their houses, savings, and continue to flail to this day. Author Michael Lewis, who probed the not so level playing field of baseball in Moneyball and examined an uncommon family unit in The Blind Side, went to investigate and tell the story of why and how Wall Street fell apart in 2008. What he found became the book The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine.
Rather than write the story from the fraudulent bankers’ point of view, Lewis discovered a few outsider oddballs who figured out long before anybody else the sky was falling. Telling the story from the viewpoint of these Chicken Littles, and how they made millions by betting against the system, Lewis created a fascinating book director Adam McKay raised his hand to bring to the movie screen. McKay, known for his absurdist comedies starring Will Farrell including Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, directs a drama for the first time. However, even though the subject matter is serious, the level of stupidity and arrogant greed rises to the same level of farce as Burgundy’s 1970s era newsroom and Ricky Bobby’s NASCAR track.
Rather than write the story from the fraudulent bankers’ point of view, Lewis discovered a few outsider oddballs who figured out long before anybody else the sky was falling. Telling the story from the viewpoint of these Chicken Littles, and how they made millions by betting against the system, Lewis created a fascinating book director Adam McKay raised his hand to bring to the movie screen. McKay, known for his absurdist comedies starring Will Farrell including Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, directs a drama for the first time. However, even though the subject matter is serious, the level of stupidity and arrogant greed rises to the same level of farce as Burgundy’s 1970s era newsroom and Ricky Bobby’s NASCAR track.
McKay, co-writing with Charles Randolph, wrote characters based on very real people who wagered all of their money betting the housing market was going to collapse. Most of the names have been changed for privacy reasons, but their actions responding to the unprecedented level of fraud and duplicity they uncovered is all too real. Bringing to life one of 2015’s best ensemble pieces, McKay and Randolph forge three separate threads who never come together on screen, but produce parts equaling a masterful whole.
Kicking off the mayhem is the man who first discovered Wall Street’s beloved mortgage-backed securities were built on a foundation of subprime loans due to default in the near future, Dr. Michael Burry (Christian Bale, Exodus: Gods and Kings). Burry blares heavy metal music in his office, comes to work barefoot, and speaks in a dreamy, almost lispy voice. His financial partners are irate when Burry bets the firm’s entire future on an invention, the credit default swap. Dr. Burry is the only person in the world going to the largest banks, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, etc…, and laying down astronomical amounts of money that their bedrock housing bond markets are going to bring the banks to their knees. The banks were only too happy to take this fool’s bet.
Kicking off the mayhem is the man who first discovered Wall Street’s beloved mortgage-backed securities were built on a foundation of subprime loans due to default in the near future, Dr. Michael Burry (Christian Bale, Exodus: Gods and Kings). Burry blares heavy metal music in his office, comes to work barefoot, and speaks in a dreamy, almost lispy voice. His financial partners are irate when Burry bets the firm’s entire future on an invention, the credit default swap. Dr. Burry is the only person in the world going to the largest banks, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, etc…, and laying down astronomical amounts of money that their bedrock housing bond markets are going to bring the banks to their knees. The banks were only too happy to take this fool’s bet.
If two people in the financial world know something then it is no longer a secret. Overhearing there was a guy out there looking to short the housing market, Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling, Gangster Squad) hopped on the bandwagon and brought in Mark Baum (Steve Carell, Freeheld). Vennett doubles as the film’s narrator frequently looking right at the camera explaining his moves and the complicated jargon the bankers throw around. Steve Carell’s Baum is the film’s moral center. Baum, at first very skeptical of Vennett, does his own digging and comes out shell-shocked. Baum meets Florida mortgage lenders providing home loans to anyone who asks and strippers who own five houses. Baum sees the future; he knows the banks are going to get hurt but in the end, they will tread water while the everyman once again takes it in the shorts.
The film’s third thread is a pair of twenty-something kids who accidentally fall into the credit default swap information. Jamie Shipley and Charlie Geller (Finn Wittrock, Unbroken and John Magaro, Not Fade Away) don’t have the capital to lay the big bucks on the line so they bring in the only heavy hitter they know, Ben Rickert (Brad Pitt, Fury). Rickert made his money and escaped Wall Street to prepare for what he predicts will be the collapse of the Earth’s environment in the next 50 years. Staking Shipley and Geller, Rickert’s presence is a serious reminder to the kids that every time they rake in another million here and a billion there from the banks, it is the regular Joe out there on the street losing everything.
The vernacular in The Big Short is nothing short of a master’s class; consolidated debt obligation and extrapolation bias are just a couple of the tongue twisters. Therefore, McKay dreamed up a gimmick that pays off in spades. Scenes cut away without warning or so much as an eye blink before a random celebrity launches into a clear as mud explanation session as if they were leading a university seminar. Margot Robbie (Focus) explains mortgage-backed securities while drinking champagne in a bubble bath. Anthony Bourdain explains CDOs while making a seafood stew and Selena Gomez (Spring Breakers) demonstrates synthetic CDOs in a casino. They don’t just break the fourth wall; they shatter it to pieces and it is all pure genius.
It also provides a manic rhythm and fast-paced momentum. Director of Photography Barry Ackroyd, an action cinematographer with credits such as Captain Phillips, The Hurt Locker, and United 93, films scenes in the office with men on the phone as if they were gut-wrenching shoot outs. The movement brings to front and center McKay’s reason for filming The Big Short in the first place. The effort feels like a call to action. The hilarious moments tell a terrifying and all too true history. The script and frequent incomprehensible dialogue neither condescends nor dumbs it down to the lowest common denominator. McKay wants you to get upset; he wants you to walk out of the theater outraged Wall Street crooks got away with it all and will most likely do it again. The Big Short is here to scare you, to perplex you, and guarantees you will talk about it for days afterward.
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