A tough gritty movie - fractured

Rating: 6/10 (24 May 2016)

It is hard to describe this film, and perhaps even harder to say whether it is a good film or a bad film. It is certainly one that make you emote and you can read that in the other reviews. It's aim is to lay bear the scandalous behaviour of the banks and how the financial system let us all down with their bad behaviour. To this end the film does its job, the problem is how it does that.
Christian Bale's character typifies the problem with this film. His character is a borderline autistic genius investor who is the first to lay a long and obscene bet against the market (a short). But since his character is largely devoid of character we just see him mooning about his office so bored that he looks like he'd consider another Batman role. Once he lays the bet he has nothing to do till the money roles in. And this the problem: we all know where this is heading so the though part is to inject drama and interest into the tedious nature of jargonised banking. This is never going to be riveting stuff.
However, as tough as the subject matter is the weird and clunky direction does not help. At times it appears that the director got bored and just ended scenes on the cutting room floor. Other times the strange use of celebrities to explain the jargon is distracting, patronising and somewhat sexist. Margot Robie's turn in a bath tub just seemed weird, rather than knowing and cool.
The subject matter is important, but it's failure to really entertain is its biggest problem.