Concepts of High Finance Made Easy and Fun

Rating: 8/10 (17 January 2016)

I finally learned the meaning of big high-finance words like synthetic CDOs, MBS, shorting, sub-primes, hedge funds, bonds and so on. Cognitive thoughts flew in my face at the speed of light and big high-finance words bombarded me at Mach3. This is scathingly funny, whip smart, surprisingly intelligible to laymen and a crackerjack of a movie and the best part is it actually has a conscience beating at its centre.
In 2005, eccentric and socially awkward hedge fund manager Michael Burry (Christian Bale) discovers that the U.S. housing market is extremely unstable, being based on subprime loans that are high risk and providing fewer and fewer returns. Predicting that the market will collapse sometime in the second quarter of 2007, he realizes that he can profit from this situation by creating a credit default swap market, allowing him to bet against the housing market. Banks thought that he is giving "free" money and accept his proposal. Burry faces pressure from every direction and finds solace in his Death Metal. He continues to beat the drum at his own pace and eventually brought in 489% profit while the rest of the world are covered in red.
Then we have a trader named Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling) who hears of Burry's actions from one of the bankers he dealt with, and soon realizes that Burry's predictions are true. He decides to put his own stake in the credit default swap market. A misplaced phone call alerts hedge fund manager Mark Baum (Steve Carell) to his plans, and Baum is convinced to join Vennett. Baum is a man who sees the world as one big giant surreal Enya MTV and he runs in counterpoint to everyone, circling the brim of anger and madness.
Finally, we have a pair of eager young investors Charlie Geller (John Magaro) and Jamie Shipley (Finn Wittrock) who discover a flyer by Vennett and also decide to become involved in the credit default swaps. Since they are too inexperienced to pull off the trades necessary to profit from the situation, they enlist the aid of retired banker Ben Rickert (Brad Pitt).
Together these individuals discovered the groundwork for the financial crisis of 2007-2010 and managed to profit enormously from it, but are ultimately left with their faith in the system shaken. This isn't a poor to riches or a "I told you so" story. These people are drawn like antiestablishment reluctant heroes calling out the big financial institutions for their greed and lack of foresight. In the midst of the narrative's relentless propulsion it retains a compassion for the everyday American without the histrionics.
For a movie with so many high concepts flying around, it is surprisingly easy to understand. Part of its marvel is that the film employs a very creative way of making the concepts digestible and scintillatingly funny. Imagine Margot Robbie in a tub, Selena Gomez in a casino and Anthony Bourdain in a kitchen using simple setups and tools to explain the high finance concepts. It is so funny but yet educational. The best one has to be the one using Jenga bricks to explain the housing bubble. These are scary big financial terms invented to screw with your brains but after this 2-hour tutorial you will be smarter. I guarantee you will remember the concepts better than what your university professor had lectured.
The energy is recklessly infectious and I was easily caught in a whirlwind of euphoria. Using an unreliable narrator who breaks the fourth wall and even lays out all the Hollywood contrivances, we get a very entertaining film that throws everything including the kitchen sink at you. A film that is so top heavy should by logical sense be bogged down by the sheer weight of its self-importance, but Adam McKay didn't make that film. Thankfully, in the midst of all the reckless abandonment, it retains a core of seething anger at the fraud of the institutions which were at last bailed out by the very taxpayers they were out to screw in the beginning. Contrary to what Gordon Gekko has proclaimed, greed is not good.