Dumbed down in the right way

Rating: 8/10 (3 December 2016)

This movie describes a world that is completely foreign to me in a way that acknowledges it's complex, but at the same time does not speak down to me. I'm not American, but despite this I am absolutely furious about what the movie says about what happened during the crisis.
At the same time, the movie has a clear agenda, and I obviously do not know enough about the subject to be able to judge if it's misrepresenting things. The movie feels plausible though, and maybe that's because it is so open about what it is. It breaks the fourth wall at times, plays around with the medium, and does what it can to explain things in a straight forward way. Often what happens is silly, and in those cases where it's actually true, the movie points it out.
The aforementioned "playing around" works well, though it's easy to go too far doing it. Here it manages to keep you into the story (an impressive feat, considering you're following several stories at once, and all of them about economics and banking), despite all of its quirks.
The cast does a great job, both the A-listers and the rest. I wish there were more scenes with certain characters, but at the same time, the balance does work well.