Confusing at times but comes with Suspense

Rating: 7/10 (4 August 2016)

The Big Short which then kicks off with a prologue detailing the invention of the mortgage backed securities that, decades later, would destroy the economy, the film proceeds to intertwine three stories from the mid-2000s of Wall Street outsiders who didn't buy into the fallacy that the housing market couldn't fail. Director Adam McKay has an odious investment banker, played by Ryan Gosling, narrate their stories. Gosling's character, Jared Vennett, works for a bank but, crucially, he doesn't think like a bank. Indeed, in a sign of how definite the industry is he's openly working against employers.
Throughout the film, we first see which is Christian Bale's anti- social, money manager Michael Burry. He's the first to actively convince head-in-the-sand investment banks to sell him insurance bonds against subprime mortgages going bad. The banks think he's a joke, but they're happy to take his money and it's not long before a combination of rumors and happenstance alerts Vennett and Steve Carell's outraged hedge-fund manager Michael Baum.
Overall the directing and chemistry amongst the leads works, but at times the film does differ and suffer at times, which causes confusion and becomes quite overstated.