TheEconoclast Reviews

Too Big to Fail (2011 TV Movie)

The Scariest Movie I've Ever Seen

[8/10 · 1 June 2011]

I'm not kidding.

This is the scariest movie I've ever seen. But that's just me.

As some who works deep in the world of finance and lost sleep with the rest of Wall Street during that dark and disturbing week, it's possible that I'm a little too close to this story. It hits home. Thankfully, Too Big to Fail opens up a window so that the rest of world can look in from the safety of their living room.

Forget monsters, serial killers, and the nouveau low-budget movement of "two guys in a room with a camera and a ghost."

This is real. This happened. This could happen again.

You'll be terrified to see just how close to the brink we came, how close we were to one of the biggest economic disasters in human history. And you'll be shocked to learn about the types of personalities in which the rest of the planet has invested so much power and authority. Troubling, yes. But it's an important piece of history as well.

In terms of production HBO knocked this one out of the park. That's to be expected, I suppose, when you sign one of the great working American directors in Curtis Hanson and use one of the most highly respected chronicles of the financial crisis as your source material. Andrew Ross Sorkin even has a cameo and gets credit as a consulting producer to make sure they got the facts straight.

So it's no wonder such a brilliant, top shelf cast fell in line. HBO must have had their pick of the litter. The names in this movie are not only eerie facsimiles of their real life counterparts, but these are the actors that can really act.

The ever-dependable William Hurt is admirable in the lead, bring a little humanity to Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, but it's the supporting performances that deserve special praise. Billy Crudup boils with intensity as an anxious, f-bomb dropping Tim Geithner, and Paul Giamatti perfectly captures the essence of Ben Bernanke, that quietly authoritative voice that the biggest egos in the world always shut up and listen to. Viewers at home will get a kick out of Ed Asner as Warren Buffett and, as is always the case with Buffett, his folksy charm serves as a bridge into to the arcane world of high finance. And former Lehman Brothers CEO Dick Fuld is appropriately vilified thanks to James Woods, not for being a greedy fraudster, but for being a sadly out-of- touch executive unable to adjust to a world that changed overnight. Despite Fuld's arrogance and bluster, Woods invests him with a subtle sense of dignity.

Too Big to Fail achieves a rare feat for talky dramas: it sustains acute tension for ninety full minutes, never slowing down and never climaxing prematurely.

Even if you're not a financial insider or policy wonk you'll be on the edge of your seat from start to finish.

Just don't watch it late at night.

Floored (2009)

Destined to become a Finance Classic

[10/10 · 12 September 2010]

The other night I watched James Allen Smith's Floored, a documentary about the floor traders at the various Chicago exchanges.

It was fantastic. If you work in the industry or have an interest in trading, I will guarantee your satisfaction.

Perhaps it was merely chance, but I found it rather fitting that I had finished up season three of Mad Men a couple nights before. "Change", of course, is one of the major themes that runs implicitly throughout that show and that theme becomes rather explicit as the third season draws to a close. The novelty of the whole Mad Men era is a really neat hook, but what really grabbed my attention and kept me watching was the subtle dramatic irony. It's ridiculous fun getting to know these ad men, their secretaries, clients, and wives. All the while the 1960′s loom on the horizon and none of them can see the tempest that's coming.

Watching Floored was a similar experience. It was shot during the middle of this last decade on a shoestring budget of only a few hundred grand. These are the final days of the floor traders, the descent of whom dovetails the rise of the machines. I'd say that here too is another situation rich with enough dramatic irony to satisfy the ancient Greeks, but Floored's characters are in on the joke. These guys are aware that they are dinosaurs, nobly plodding along toward their ultimate, collective demise. Their world is burning down around them but they carry their heads up high. There's something to be said for that, I suppose.

Different traders respond to this in different ways: a few embrace the computers, others deny their significance. Some leave the industry altogether while a tortured handful rage, rage against the dying of the light. Gentleness is not part of a floor trader's DNA.

I think the movie speaks more broadly to everyone in the industry. Those of you that work in finance don't need to be told how dynamic a world it is. I came of age during a technological tsunami; my first job was at a traditional retail brokerage while stocks like E*Trade and Ameritrade IPO'd and shot to the moon. Talk about irony!

All my generation has known is change, especially those of us that work in finance. Trying to keep up is impossible at best and anxiety-inducing at worst.

Some of these traders in the film are a little rough-and-tumble, a necessary characteristic for survival on the floor. But they share that same struggle as the rest of us, the endless battle to keep up. You may just sympathize with them. Beyond that, I think there's a deeper theme that speaks to all men specifically. On a fundamental level it's about the challenges of providing for one's family and those who trust you to succeed. Each day these men venture into the jungle; to eat, they must kill. One of the traders that Smith chooses to follow is also big game hunter. That wasn't an accidental decision on the director's part. The metaphor is clear.

Mark my words now: this movie is destined to become a cult classic within the industry, much the way Wall Street and Boiler Room and Glengarry Glen Ross have. Those are all excellent films. But the difference with Floored is that it is true story. These traders and this industry are not romanticized. This isn't a glorification of the capitalistic dream. There is a brutal honesty here that you will respond to in one way or another.