A Different Look at the Housing Crisis of 2008

Rating: 4/10 (31 March 2016)

Based on the same housing economic meltdown in 2008, The Big Short covers the story from the different viewpoint of a few who saw it coming. Michael Burry (Christian Bale), was a physician and hedge fund manager, creator of Scion Capital LLC. He was the first to recognize the impending doom of the careless practices by financial institutions and bet heavy on the housing market bubble to burst in a big way. He was so confident in his analysis that he used $1 Billion of his investors money. Some of his investors were more than displeased and pulled out in 2006 and 2007. When the market crashed in 2008, Burry profited $100 million for himself and another $700 for his remaining investors. He was quoted as saying, "I don't go out looking for good shorts. I'm spending my time looking for good longs."
Banker Jared Vennett (Ryan Gossling) and another hedge fund manager Mark Baum (Steve Carell) caught wind of what Burry was up to and jumped in as well. Some young investors accidentally discovered what Vennett was up to and talked Ben Rickert (Brad Pitt), an ex stocks trader, into taking part.
The Big Short was nominated for Best Picture of the Year and Bale was nominated for his supporting role. It won for Best Adapted Screenplay. The preview looks to be a stinging look at the corporate greed that rocked the world with a bit of humor as a small group forms a bit of a financial coup. However, the humor is either going to be one of those "it's funnier because it's true" situations, or it will illicit a sort of "ha-ha-ouch" at just how crippling their ignorance and greed was, and still remains today.
I anticipated rating this 3.5 stars. Throughout the movie, I dropped down to 2.5, but raised it up to a final verdict of 3.0 stars. It's entertaining, well-acted, but sometimes hard to follow. What helped me raise it up was that the movie self-admits that it's own subject matter is boring and confusing. It takes breaks from the film in unique ways to help those of us not in the know what exactly is going on. I was still confused at parts during the film, but those moments of "banking for dummies" definitely helped. These breaks are done through an artistic method called "breaking the fourth wall". In theatre and in film, when you as an audience member are looking at a scene with 3 walls in a room, the fourth wall is assumed to be where the camera is positioned. You take it for granted that there is a fourth wall and don't think about the cameras and cables and directors and monitors, etc that are actually there. When an actor on stage acknowledges the audience by speaking directly to them, or in a movie when you are addressed by the actor breaking away from the movie, they are ultimately admitting that there is no fourth wall, that this is just a play or a movie and that there are people watching in one way or another. Gossling's character helps to drive the story much like a narrator in a Shakespearean play who introduces the plot with a prologue, has a couple recapping monologues and then sums it up with a prologue.
Unfortunately for The Big Short, if you watched any television at all or were on the internet or picked up a paper in late 2008, most of the things covered in the movie, we already knew. The banks started making more money off of mortgages by clumping them into bundles. They were secure with the best ratings meaning that there was almost no chance the mortgages wouldn't be paid back. The banks made a ton of money. Eventually, housing for the qualified homeowners started to dry up and the bonuses started to shrink. That's when they started lumping in some riskier mortgages in to the bundle. No one did background checks and the mortgages written were only for a short introductory period that would then balloon into 200 to 300 per cent of the original payback rate. When the introductory period ended and millions found they couldn't afford their payments, millions lost their homes and even more lost their jobs and the banks covered it all up. When the truth was finally discovered, it was too late and the US Government saw no other way to limit and reverse the damages than to shell out billions in taxpayer money to the banks. This money was used to then pay out big bonuses and only one person ever went to jail. And the banks are still doing it today, just with different names.
The Big Short was very well-acted, entertaining, confusing, upsetting, but seeing it once was enough for me. I might catch it on TV someday, but it won't be making it to my home collected, hence the 3.0 star rating.