The Big Short

I never expected an Oscar-material picture from director Adam McKay. Silly and enjoyable, maybe, but nothing that would get the Academy's attention. But here he is with The Big Short, a story of banks behaving badly. And it's ready for some Academy attention.

McKay and Charles Randolph reworked Michael Lewis's non-fiction book of the same name into their screenplay. A lot of names were changed to protect the innocent and not-so innocent. But the anger you'll feel when you see what happened is real.

In 2005, Michael Burry (Christian Bale) realizes the housing market is broken. Burry decides to bet against the housing market to get rich once the market goes bust. Meanwhile, a few investors discover Burry's plan. These include Mark Baum (Steve Carrell), Charlie Geller (John Magaro) and Jamie Shipley (Finn Wittrock), and the film's narrator, Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling). They all want to try their luck. It takes a matter of time before they realize that once they win, the world economy itself will go bust. 

It's far-more restrained than The Wolf of Wall Street, another film about corrupt money men, by a country mile. But that doesn't mean it's a typical Hollywood story. The characters, especially Vennett, constantly break the fourth wall to explain themselves. Vennett introduces random celebrity cameos (like Margot Robbie) as themselves to explain big banking terms. There are even diagrams. The humor may throw off people most of the time. But I found a few laughs (highlight: one character's monolgue, in English, after we were told he doesn't speak it). 

But this was one angry satire. All the exposition helps us realize how inept big banks were in managing themselves. They brag about their accomplishments with no remorse. One banker will gladly buy rapidly-declining stock from a soon-to-implode Bear Stearns. Almost none of these quacks went to prison. These idiots would be entertaining if not for the consequences. There is righteous rage waiting for them.

And editor Hank Corwin is there to build up that righteous rage. We may know what happened, but to see it unfold on-screen is like seeing it in real life. A great example is near the end with a seminar concurrent with the collapsing Bear Stearns. Text messages say it all: down, down, down. The archive footage the film uses paints a picture of the time period it came from. 

The Big Short is all about the evils and stupidity of greed. At the end, our protagonists don't feel like celebrating their successes (except for Vennett). Don't let Adam McKay's filmography turn you off. This film's message is worth listening to.