Review of Margin Call (2011) by Lorenzo V — 13 Feb 2012

"Be first. Be smarter. Or cheat.".

Follows the key people at an investment bank, over a 24-hour period, during the early stages of the financial crisis.

REVIEW.

A cast of middling to great actors all give excellent performances in a movie so terse and devoid of histrionics that it feels almost like a documentary. Taking place over one long dark night of the soul, a group of Wall Street suits, ranging from peons to muckety-mucks, come to the slow realization that their company is about to fold and that the only way to stem the blood flow is to liquidate most of the company's assets, thereby setting off the market crash that they know will bring the global economy down low. The various characters have greater to lesser feelings of guilt about this -- Jeremy Irons and Paul Bettany get a couple of dog-eat-dog speeches, while Kevin Spacey and Zachary Quinto serve as the film's moral conscious -- but really no one person's opinion matters much in the face of a steam engine charging out of control.

"Margin Call" takes a very resigned tone to the whole episode. It doesn't really ask its audience to leap to their feet in rage at the way the casual actions of a few can so seriously harm the many, but rather to simply accept that the disgustingly rich will always be rich at the sake of those who are not. The consolation is that these disgustingly rich people don't seem especially happy or fulfilled; the strive for material wealth seems to lead nowhere but to a strive for even more material wealth. That that kind of lifestyle leaves people hollowed out is made abundantly clear in the film's final image.