CDO's CDO's CDO's CDO's CDO's CDO's CDO's

Rating: 6/10 (12 February 2016)

Have you ever sat down and watched a film, enjoyed it, but have no f*cking idea what just happened and what you just watched? Well that was my experience with the Big Short.
Adam McKay, director of many a Will Ferrell comedy including Anchorman, presents the best comedy about the 2008 American economic collapse to date. The screenplay is extremely intelligent and funny as it attempts to explain how exactly the banks ran the housing market into the ground because of greed and stupidity.
Christian Bale was underused in this film as Michael Burry, not really given much to do, confined to one room for 90% of his scenes, but to be fair there wasn't much more he could have done due to the truth in the story. Steve Carrel was brilliant as Mark Baum, constantly driven by anger and cynicism. His motivation certainly rubbed off on me as I left the theatre rather riled up (in a good way) for unknown reasons.
I don't know anything about banking, not even the basic knowledge the average person would know. CDO's are said a hell of a lot but I still have no idea what a CDO is. Because of this I feel that the problem I have is not necessarily the films fault. It tries to explain how simple banking is and how the bank complicated things through its choice of vocabulary and acronym's, but ultimately, it's narrative was lost on me as I feel it easily could do with some audiences.
I would imagine that if I saw this film a second time and really got into the zone, concentrating hard, I would probably understand it. I would still recommend you see the Big Short (especially if your IQ is large) but I would also highly recommend multiple viewings as I think there is more to be learnt and understood about the economic crash the more times you watch it's Oscar nominated film.