Review of The Big Short (2015) by Bhbarry — 14 Dec 2015

"The Big Short" is a film based on the book by Michael Lewis which details the fall of Wall Street in 2008 and the circumstances that led up to it. With an adaption of Mr. Lewis' book by Director Adam McKay and co-writer Charles Randolph, the film has an outstanding ensemble cast including Ryan Gosling, Steve Carell, Christian Bale and Brad Pitt (who was also one of the producers of the film). Mr. Bale’s character and 3 others find that the bundles of mortgages being sold by Wall Street firms to their investors are loaded with subprime (a/k/a) "bad") mortgages, most of which have adjustable sweetheart rates that end in or about 2007. Recognizing this and the debacle that will ultimately occur when mortgage rates and payments will suddenly soar and foreclosures will become the inevitable consequence,, these savvy mavericks swap or 'sell short' these bundles in order to reap the high profit that they anticipate will come about. The film is filled with trade acronyms and concepts that even well seasoned brokers would not understand so, in order to educate the viewing audience, stars like Selena Gomez, Anthony Bourdain and a lady in a bubble bath interject themselves into various frames in the film in order to explain to the viewer the complexities of these arrangements.

The vehicle works and what might otherwise have been a disaster of technical jargon becomes a more or less easily understood combination of events, both serious and comedic, that led to the crash of 2008. There is no single performance that stands out although the sum of all them makes this a film that should be seen by anyone who directly or indirectly was impacted by what occurred in the fatal year when Wall Street houses and stocks crumbled. I give the film a 93 and recommend that it be seen if, for no other reason, to understand how vulnerable an unregulated and rogue bunch of brokers, dealers and institutions can and, in fact, did manipulate the system.