One of the Best of 2015, from the Director of...ANCHORMAN?

Rating: 9/10 (23 November 2016)

It's rare that a movie can confound me as much as THE BIG SHORT and still come out as one of my favorite movies of the year. This film is most likely befuddling for anyone not in the banking industry (as it was for me) but director Adam McKay gets bonus points for keeping it so consistently entertaining that I wasn't all that bothered by the onslaught of insider lingo. THE BIG SHORT is an important film. It brings to light all of the shady, underhanded dealings that led to the collapse of the American housing market in 2008 and it does so in a way that is both informative and entertaining. I mean, we all knew we'd been screwed over by the banks but I can't imagine many of us knew what exactly it was that had happened. McKay's film, based on the book of the same name from author Michael Lewis, follows a group of people that realized the housing market was heading for catastrophe and took a big chance on betting against it. It began with a man named Michael Burry (Christian Bale) who discovered the disturbing trend that would ultimately end in financial collapse and placed the first bet. Others soon caught on, including a hedge fund team run by Mark Baum (Steve Carell) who saw this as a chance to stab back at the big banks. And finally, the third team is a duo of young upstart investors who see their chance to win big.
I've watched THE BIG SHORT a few times now and I'll admit, while I enjoy it just as much if not more each time, my understanding of the events never gets much clearer. McKay takes a chance with this film and leaves the authenticity in the dialogue, all but ensuring I'll never convince a friend to give this movie a chance. I guarantee five minutes into this movie with rants about mortgages, CDOs, and hedge funds will send most of them running the other direction. If I can convince them to stick around long enough, Margot Robbie will explain CDOs from the cozy confines of a bubble bath and, maybe, it might arouse their interest. It's a fun little trick McKay utilizes because he realizes 99% of the audience won't be able to follow the dense lingo of the banking industry. Instead, he uses cut-away celebrity explanations and fourth-wall-breaking narration to the audience to keep us in the loop. McKay even has one of the characters explain directly to the audience how the banking industry uses these complicated terms and acronyms to confuse outsiders and keep them from understanding what exactly it is the banks are doing. So don't feel bad if you walk away from this movie and still aren't sure what happened. But really it isn't all that hard to follow. Essentially the banks were so confident of the housing market and peoples' abilities to pay their mortgages that they viewed them as a means of easy profit.
Obviously they were wrong. People became unable to pay their mortgages and, not only did the banks not notice where things were headed, they did little to nothing to prepare for potential catastrophe. There's a revealing moment late in the movie where Baum and his team attend an exhibition in Las Vegas and Baum, unable to believe that the banks could be so ridiculously stupid, flat out asks them about the disturbing trends. He's laughed off and we're led to understand that those in the banking industry were just that clueless. It's infuriating. And that brings me to the tone of THE BIG SHORT. McKay walks a fine line between funny and dramatic. Depressing and exciting. We're along for the ride with these outside-the-box thinkers on this gamble and, while we want them to succeed, we're also reminded of what their success will mean. Sure, they'll win big. Real big. But, as Brat Pitt's character reminds us when his investor protégées get a little too excited, this is Americans' livelihoods at stake. These men stand to win ridiculous sums of money but at a horrible cost. THE BIG SHORT ensures we remember this, and these characters aren't portrayed as heartless men (well, all right, maybe one of them). Each of them has a crisis of conscience when the big moment is looming. THE BIG SHORT is important because it takes a close look at one of the United States' biggest mistakes and McKay uses every trick in his filmmaking bag of tricks to make it a bearable experience that we can both enjoy and learn from. I mean, we wouldn't want this sort of thing to happen again. Except, as one of the closing title cards in the movie explains, it's already sort of starting down that path