Absurd movie, political polemic masquerading as drama.

Rating: 5/10 (19 January 2016)

It's easy to target banks and financial institutions as the bad guys whose only goal is to sell overvalued junk to an unsuspecting public. That is the theme of the movie. The political message of this movie is so transparently obvious that it calls into question the movie maker's motivation for making the movie. Obviously, the maker of this movie does not like banks or bankers. The movie goes so far as to assert that financial institutions deliberately defrauded the American public. That makes for a convenient story because it sets up the banks as the bad guys, which is a conventional and time tested plot device for making movies. Yet the movie also disclaims that it is a work of fiction, which is the only factual part of this otherwise turgid and heavy handed attack on the financial system that drives the economy. The fact is that in the world of financial investing, it is impossible to predict outcome. With every investment instrument comes risks. Every mortgage is potentially a financial time bomb that can lose or gain value. What is considered a solid investment can immediately become garbage. To think that the banks know in advance that their holdings are worthless, and that it's time to sell short, means that they are able to predict the future. Besides, what vested interest do banks have to ruin the entire economy? When people were sold homes which were financed through mortgages, everyone, banks and home owners alike, believed that these mortgages were secure. They believed it because the price of homes was going up. Then the bubble burst and the economy took a heavy hit. To suggest, however, that the banks knew IN ADVANCE that this would happen is stretching literary license to the bounds of ridiculousness. It would be like betting on a "sure bet" at the track and then blaming the track after the sure bet loses on the spurious claim that the track knew in advance that the horse would not win. That's the nature of gambling, which is what speculation is about. The good guys in this movie are four stock brokers. They are the good guys because they have a conscience and know that what they are trading is junk. Yet they still trade, which shows that they are just as greedy as the rest. The premise of this movie is absurd. However, the premise of the story notwithstanding, the movie contains several string performances. Steve Carell dominates this movie. In a performance that goes against his typical kind of role, he plays a stock broker who has to make decisions that put his sense of morality to the test. To learn what he does, watch the movie.