Unlike Charles Ferguson’s Oscar-winning documentary Inside Job that made your blood boil at the sheer gall of the games played financial institutions and leading persons involved, ex-Merrill Lynch employee and writer-director J.C. Chandor’s new thriller serves a token of sweet torment on the money-grabbing scoundrels that kicked off the financial crisis.
It’s 2008, and after sweeping redundancies are announced at an investment bank on Wall Street, outgoing risk management boss Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci) hands a USB drive with an unfinished project on it to junior risk analyst Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto), saying “be careful”. After finishing the project that same night, Sullivan horrifyingly discovers that trading will soon exceed the historical volatility levels used by the firm to calculate risk, and if mortgage-backed securities decrease by 25 per cent, the firm will suffer a loss greater than its market capitalisation. The plan of action that brings in senior management in the early hours (played by Kevin Spacey, Demi Moore, Paul Bettany, Jeremy Irons and Simon Baker) and puts heads on the line is an ugly one that will destroy the firm’s relationships with its clients and counterparties, who will never trust them again.
You don’t have to talk financial speak to understand the environment you are entering into, but it can only help. That said Margin Call is still a gripping, sophisticated, adrenaline-fuelled attempt at humanising today’s folk devil, the banker, the world of which Chandor simplifies to expose the motivation, greed and gambling to the fore. It’s a quick-talking, snappy-decision-making drama, without any special thrills, the majority of which is shot in a cool and clinical corporate environment that still has a dangerous allure.
The film’s primary strength, apart from being well written, is all down to the honed performances enacting the risky, sleazy game playing that both riles and fascinates. Spacey and Bettany dominant centre stage in most of their scenes, and are simply at their glorious best. Spacey who plays Sam Rogers, Head of Sales, is the closest this drama gets to a character with a warm pulse, as we get snippets of empathy, bordering on wavering remorse. Bettany seems to dip into the psychopathic mindset of his former baddie characters, like The Da Vinci Code’s Silas, only cloaked in an approachable, carefree but money-centric, devilish rogue disguise as senior fixed income salesman Will Emerson. As their sales roles suggest, it’s their performances that ultimately sell the film, and help expose the toxicity of its senior players, like CEO John Tuld, played brilliantly and callously by Jeremy Irons, as he buries the littler man while casually eating breakfast in his glass high tower.
The beauty of Chandor’s stylish film is it makes no excuses for the damage caused, and offers no answers; it merely dangles its players on hooks and allows us to watch them squirm and (some) wriggle free. In turn, this heightens our reproach for them but also holds them in ‘another worldly’ awe at their precarious choice of money-orientated lifestyle. It’s a curious watch because it’s aloof and standoff-ish nature, though simultaneously provides a few ironic scoffs and intimate reveals when the barriers begin to crumble.
Ultimately, nobody is a winner and all are tainted by association: In this sense, it’s an acutely satisfying watch for the rest of us, expertly crafted by a debut feature film writer-director demonstrating and using a sound knowledge of 30 years of banking experience.
[Rating:4/5]
