Margin Call

ATTENTION: MOVIE SPOILERS INCLUDED!!

Margin Call

January 29 2012

It is a rare treat that I get to see two movies in one weekend. This movie I watched on DVD with my hubby.

My opinion:

2.5 out of 5 bags of popcorn for the overall movie

3 out of 5 boxes of milk duds for my personal entertainment

My suggestion: Watch on DVD

The gist: Margin Call is a movie about an investment bank that is downsizing. One of the people fired was working on a risk assessment of the firm’s current financial situation . He hands his work off to his young college who spends all night crunching numbers only to find out that the firm is headed for serious financial disaster. Late in to the night, the upper management team is called in and then finally the board of directors. What follows is a plan to get the company out of this disaster using whatever means necessary. Long into the night, the board of directors decides to save the companies skin, no matter what ethical boundaries they cross.

I had incredibly high hopes for this movie for a few reasons: 1) because of the amazing cast and 2) because of my interest in the subject matter (I love movies about the stock market and financial crisis). I thought one of the problems with this movie was that the story line kept going and going and going and seemed to be missing cohesiveness to it. There were so many characters in the movie to keep track of, but I didn’t feel like I really got to know any of them. And because the depth of the characters was so poor, I just didn’t really care what happened to them.

There were, however, some very memorable performances specifically by Kevin Spacy and Stanley Tucci. Both amazing actors and perfect in their roles. These were two of the characters that were built up in the movie which was definitely one of the highlights.

At the end of the day (to use a banking term) the story line fell flat and I was disappointed because there were so many other interesting directions they could have taken the film but they didn’t!! Too bad!