Review of Margin Call (2011) by Tibor B — 13 Jan 2014

This financial drama is played as a disaster movie, as in the lives of these investment bankers, the financial collapse of 2008 was nothing short of an apocalypse. J.C. Chandor's debut film is full of confidence, and he has gathered a superb cast which helps keep this inevitably dialogue heavy film nothing short of rivetting.

Jeremy Irons has fun as the billionaire CEO who asks his numbers boffins to explain the meltdown forecast to him as if "to a labrador". Kevin Spacey gets a decent role as the passionless company man who really finds his dying dog more distressing.

It's also a real testament to Chandor's writing skill that the we can get behind these characters to some extent, as let's face it, many of them are the multi-million bonus amoral monsters we are supposed to hate these days.

Chandor wisely makes them all believable and credible in their motivations, and really paints a clear picture of just how the whole system itself is its own dynamic entity, beyond the understanding or control of the very people playing risky and greedy gambling games within it.

I'm sure there is far more to the story than presented here, as we know many of the banks were making profitable bets on the very soon to be worthless shares they were desperately selling, but this story told in this way works very well indeed.