The Big Short comes up big.

Rating: 8/10 (18 January 2016)

There is no other movie in recent memory that is quite the same as The Big Short. Adam McKay has crafted a well oiled machine of financial lessons and meta comedy, an unlikely duo at that. The Big Short is about the recent financial crisis and more specifically the crash of the housing market and the people that benefited from it. This description makes the lead characters seem like the bad guys, but they were just taking advantage of the misconduct of the banks and the general system of mortgage companies. The way that McKay lays out all of the complicated banker mumbo jumbo into terms that a normal viewer can understand is stunning. I was interested in a topic that had never even crossed my mind before, and by the end credits my head was just buzzing with financial terms that I still had little to no idea about, but was interested to learn more.
The cast is the definition of an ensemble. The true stars of this movie are Steve Carell as Mark Baum, Christian Bale as Michael Burry and Ryan Gosling as Jarred Vennett. Out of these only Bale's character is real but the other are based on real people. Carell is the real standout performance here. He has the perfect blend of comedic and dramatic acting for this role and I think this is where he is at his best. He was a joy to watch and is the moral barometer for the viewer. He is trying to do what we the viewer would hope to do in his position, make the corrupt banks pay for their crimes and making a load of money for the trouble. Bale and Gosling hold their own bolstered by a few more performances that round out one of the best casts of the year including John Magaro as Charlie Geller, Finn Wittrock as Jamie Shipley and Brad Pitt as Ben Rickert. The strength of the ensemble cast reminded me of another cast this year, Spotlight, and that is pretty good company to be in.
Adam McKay has always been a good directer who knows comedy and how to get great performances out of large casts of actors. This is without a doubt his best effort so far. The pacing of the movie was outstanding, an area of some of McKay's movies that I have thought lacked. It moves fast and jumps long stretches of time with short pop culture montages of the time that has passed. The actors will frequently turn right to the camera and talk directly to the audience, which some may find frustrating but as someone who continued to get lost in the stock trader lingo, it felt nice to fell like the characters were there to hit pause and help explain some of the more complicated portions. McKay brought over some comedy tricks with the camera to help the movie out. At times the direction seemed scattered and even poorly done, but this does two things. One it inherently makes things funnier when the camera randomly zooms in or starts filming something seemingly unimportant. It also makes the viewer feel like the characters in the movie. They don't know what exactly is going on, it makes the viewer feel like they are right there in the board room hearing all this crazy stuff first hand.
The writing is a great blend of Michael Lewis style number crunching and information gathering, and a comedic twist as to avoid extreme boredom for the normal viewer. The writing is witty and fast paced and perfectly book ended by a nice financial lesson. It was an incredibly smart choice to add the comedy element to the movie and McKay and Charles Randolph have made a script that is not just compelling and interesting, but also one of the funniest movie of the year.
The Big Short addresses an issue that just about every American dealt with. It was one of the most important events in American history and still very few people know what happened. This movie is the perfect way to learn exactly why the economy of this country failed and how people will do anything they can to make money even if it may be disruptive in the future. It is a movie that does not hold back and tells the story it believes is the one that needs to be told, not necessarily the best story. There are twists and turns that you will not expect, but it does not need to surprise you or have some sort of twist ending, it lets the incompetence of the banks do that. If you are in any way interested in this movie it is a must see and for any movie fan is it certainly worth the watch.