Margin Call (2011) v. Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps (2010)

Wall Street was an amazing film. Yes, it was Oliver Stone’s attempt to slander the 1980’s and Reaganism, but Stone misfired and what he created instead was a film that captured the thrill of the 1980’s and sent a generation of kids to finance school to become his villain Gordon Gekko. Since that time, Stone’s ability as a filmmaker has faded. In 2010, he went back to Wall Street to see if he couldn’t steal some of his prior glory. He couldn’t. The movie he created was overly complex, meandering and stupid. It stood for nothing really. The movie he should have made was Margin Call.

Margin Call is one of those financial films that will scare most people away just by its description: “Huh, some guys who create something called asset-backed securities find out their assets are worthless and they don’t know what to do about it. Shoot me now... let’s watch Transformers.” In reality though, this is an excellent film that is worth seeing, even for people with no idea what an asset-backed security is. Moreover, this film very simply explains what happened in 2008 and how the financial world came crashing down.

Margin Call begins when junior risk analyst Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto) discovers that a group of assets the firm holds are worth far less than they paid for them. They are worth so little, in fact, that the losses on these assets alone (which are bought on margin) would bankrupt the firm if the world knew their true value. And in that regard, Peter and his boss (Paul Bettany) realize that the world will discover the truth within days. They tell the firm’s higher ups.

This sets off a series of events as senior firm personnel are called in even though it’s late night to come up with a strategy to deal with this crisis. A strategy is slowly developed to dump as many of these assets as possible at the opening of the trading day, no matter what the loss on these sales. This will destroy the firm’s reputation and the reputation of its traders, but it is the only way the firm will survive. In the process of developing this strategy, the film does an excellent job of explaining what asset-backed securities are how the firm was blindsided by their collapse in value, and you see a good deal of infighting, moralizing, struggling with hard decisions, and the lining-up of fall guys and scapegoats. The end result is a surprisingly gripping film, driven by a strong cast: Jeremy Irons, Stanley Tucci, Kevin Spacey, Simon Baker, Demi Moore, etc., which gives you a fairly accurate insight into how the financial crisis of 2008 began and how it played out at its very beginning.

By comparison, Money Never Sleeps is convoluted fantasy. It is Oliver Stone’s attempt to make you hate Gordon Gekko the way he wanted you to hate him after Wall Street. Essentially, the story of Money Never Sleeps is that Stone resurfaces from prison and finds his estranged daughter (Carey Mulligan). He claims he wants to rebuild his relationship with her. Coincidentally, she’s dating Shia LaBeouf, who is a trader at an investment firm. Shia is trying to raise money for a nuclear fusion project which would provide the world with massive amounts of clean energy. Unfortunately, Shia keeps getting blocked by Josh Brolin, who runs another Wall Street bank.

Gekko comes to Shia’s aid by telling him that Brolin is the enemy. Brolin, coincidentally, profited from the collapse of Shia’s old firm, which also led to the suicide of Shia’s old boss. Shia seeks revenge by spreading rumors he thinks will hurt Brolin’s firm. Brolin is somehow impressed by this and bizarrely hires Shia. Shia takes the job because he wants to avenge his boss’s suicide. He then uses his new position to get the Chinese to finance the fusion project. Everyone is happy.

Shia then learns that the Chinese (through Brolin) have betrayed him by investing in solar panels and fossil fuels instead of fusion. He is sad again. Gekko then proposes an alternative plan. All Shia needs to do is to convince Gekko’s daughter to give Gordon access to the $100 million trust fund he left her in Switzerland, and they could fund the project themselves. Naturally, he agrees because this is for a good cause. Of course, the daughter agrees too... and then Gordon steals the money and re-establishes himself on the street as a hedgefund manager. This was apparently the plan all along, no matter how Rube Goldbergian it was. Gordon won’t even give the money back in exchange for normalizing his relationship with his daughter and his new grandson because HE IS EVIL, people!!! (“F*** you idiots need to finally see that! He used his daughter!! How much more obvious can I make this?!!” – Oliver Stone)

As this story stumbles along, we are told that the collapse of Shia’s firm started the financial crisis. This led to a bailout of Brolin’s firm, which Brolin got because he dines with the regulators. But don’t worry, Gekko’s daughter runs an obscure website and she publishes the story of how Brolin caused everything, which causes Brolin to give back $1.1 billion and puts him under scrutiny by the government. Then Gekko gives the $100 million to the fusion people and they all reconcile. Yay.

These movies couldn’t be more different. Margin Call is accurate. It is cutting. It is dramatic. You don’t know what is going to happen, but you can’t pull your eyes away from the screen as these people, who seem decent in good times, turn into sharks when things go wrong and they find themselves balancing their own futures, the existence of the firm, the welfare of the employees, the welfare of the market, and the harm to the country. Each of them handles this differently, and that makes them fascinating to watch as they struggle with how to survive this likely career-ending crisis.

Most interestingly, none of them were villains when they caused this crisis, but some now become villains... or are they? Indeed, while it is easy to see them as rotten, the real question you keep asking yourself is if you would actually do anything differently at this point. That idea makes this a truly soul searching, gripping story as you place yourself into the shoes of these characters and you wonder how you would handle being them. Would you be more noble? Is there even anything more noble you could do? What could you live with? What could you ask of others? These are all fascinating questions which are brought on by this film.

Wall Street, by comparison, is a joke. It has zero accuracy in terms of the financial crisis. It feels like Stone took a couple contradictory paranoid ideas, invented a villain, and then spun a fantasy which he thinks is damning but comes across as fringy and silly. He seems to suggest that the financial crisis is the result of a villain or two spreading lies about other company’s assets and thereby causing a panic. That’s ridiculous. At the same time, the story meanders on this point as it is only told to us in asides to the Shia v. Gekko story, and that story is ridiculous. The idea that Gekko orchestrated a plan which involved people being framed and fired and committing suicide and a nation-threatening financial crisis just to get at his daughter’s trust fund through her boyfriend is ludicrous.

The long and the short of it, is that I had no idea what to expect when I watched Margin Call and I found myself glued to the screen. This film felt like a mix of the best parts of Wall Street and Glengary Glenn Ross. It was tense, interesting, and informative. You feel like you understand the financial crisis so much better by the time the film is over and you find yourself both despising these people but wondering if you would have acted any differently. It is a brilliant film.

Money Never Sleeps, on the other hand, is a film you should skip. It is only a reminder of how much Stone has lost as a storyteller.

Thoughts?

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Film Friday: Horrible Bosses (2011)

Lately, we’ve been talking about the dearth of good comedies in the modern era. It seems that most modern comedies are gross rather than funny, dull rather than clever, and generally generic. I had little hope for Horrible Bosses. Imagine my surprise to find a truly enjoyable film.

** spoiler alert **

Horrible Bosses is the story of three disgruntled employees, Nick (Jason Bateman), Kurt (Jason Sudeikis) and Dale (Charlie Day), who decide they want their bosses dead. Eventually, in an homage to Hitchcock’s Strangers on A Train, they decide that the only way to make this happen, and to not get caught, is if they kill each other’s bosses. But there’s a problem. . . they’re idiots. And soon the hunters become the hunted.

This film works for a variety of reasons, each of which is generally missing in the comedies of people like Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow. Specifically, you have well-drawn characters, a tight script, and clever social commentary.

● Well-Drawn Characters: One of the first things you notice in Bosses is the great characters. What makes them stand out from other modern comedies is that they are all unique. For example, Nick, Kurt and Dale each have different personalities, see their jobs differently, and have different driving motivations (money, love, public good). Yet, they have formed an enduring friendship, which the actors sell through the way they interact, particularly the use of careful comedic timing to fire lines back and forth and thereby show they have known each other for years. Good luck finding that in an Apatow film, where the relationships are distant.

But the real treat is the bosses. Kevin Spacey plays Nick’s boss Dave Harken. He exploits his employees with promises he’ll never keep and with threats. He’s abusive and angry and jealous of anyone who gets near his wife. Spacey plays this character like he played the hateful Buddy Ackerman in Swimming With Sharks, only he adds an element of maniacal joy to his evil. This makes you enjoy hating him rather than just hating him. He also gives the character just enough of a God-complex to make his over-the-top actions entirely believable.

Colin Farrell plays Bobby Pellit, a drug-abusing, power-abusing, paranoid slimeball wannabe, who inherits a great company and decides to run it into the ground because he hated his father and because he’s paranoid that others look down on him. He’s the kind of guy who has a wall-sized portrait of himself doing martial arts. Like Spacey, Farrell makes the character believable by adding just enough hints of paranoia and self-doubt behind his eyes to let you know why this guy really would act this way.

Finally, you have Jennifer Aniston, as uber-cougar Dentist Julia Harris. What she does so perfectly here is to put on a hard-sell seduction of Dale, which would frankly work on any man, and then add a little touch in each scene to make it uncomfortable. It’s in those moments of discomfort that you see her insanity and where everything she does becomes believable. She is essentially completely out of control.

These characters are all funny and believable. They all have unique traits, which broadens the variety of jokes available. Also, the good guys are good, unlike in a Rogen film, and they aren’t unmotivated and pathetic, like in an Apatow film, so you genuinely cheer for them against the bad guys.

● Tight Script: This leads us to the second point: the tight script. One of the biggest problems with modern comedies is sloppy scripts with characters doing things which make no sense and unrelated gags strewn throughout the film. None of that is true here. For one thing, there’s no filler. Everything any of the characters does is designed to show you some aspect of their personality which explains their future actions. And everything these characters do makes sense. For example, the heroes don’t just decide to kill their bosses because the script calls for it, they are pushed into it when their bosses attack things which are dear to them and make it clear they will continue to harm them in the future, AND their alternatives are taken away. Even then, they act reluctantly because they just aren’t killers.

Further, nothing in this film comes out of the blue because everything is foreshadowed. And the crazier the event, the greater the foreshadowing, with the craziest moments being foreshadowed at least twice. For example, toward the end, it becomes important that their On-Star-like system can hear what is being said in the car. Before this happens, however, you are shown twice how this works with conversations with the On-Star service rep. Thus, when this moment arrives, you don’t have any problems accepting it. Similarly, another character is distracted by an attractive woman at a critical moment. While this may seem difficult to believe under normal conditions, you’ve actually seen this character get similarly distracted twice before and you’ve been told how this woman fools around. Again, this means you never once doubt what happens. Compare this with Apatow and Rogen films where events occur seemingly randomly and without any warning.

Also unlike Rogen and Apatow, this script rarely sinks to sex jokes or gross-out jokes. And the few times it does, the jokes are understated, leaving much to the imagination, and it always has a purpose, i.e. it will become relevant before the film ends.

● Clever Social Commentary: Finally, this film takes swipes at liberal sacred cows. For example, the three heroes want to find a hired killer, so they go to a bar in a black neighborhood. They don’t think of themselves as racist, but the racism is obvious in their assumption that murderers would most likely be found at a black bar. When the bartender reacts poorly to the suggestion that all black people must be criminals, they try to use standard liberal talking points about tolerance and oppression to talk their way out of it by suggesting they see “you people” as victims. To this, the bartender angrily retorts that he’s a small business man. The liberals are stumped. But their liberal stupidity has drawn the attention of Dean “Motherf*cker” Jones (Jamie Foxx), who exploits the prejudice they didn’t believe they had.

There are also jokes about Priuses versus SUVs, they make light of sexual harassment and anal sex in prisons, and there is a funny moment about how useless it is to force someone who is intent on killing you to keep their firearms in a locked case. . . it doesn’t prevent anything. These joke aim directly at the flaws inherent in these liberal ideas, flaws which politically correct liberals pretend don’t exist. Naturally, for doing this, writer Markowitz got hammered for being racist, homophobic and misogynistic. But the joke was ultimately on the critics, as the film broke records on its way to making $209 million worldwide.

This film has much going for it, especially compared to recent comedies. Is it the greatest comedy ever? Hardly. Is it better than Ghostbusters or Night At The Opera? Nope. But it shows that buddy comedies can still be funny, and it does that by giving us unique, likeable and hate-able characters, by giving us a solid script with zero waste or padding, by poking fun at things Hollywood normally won’t touch, and without making us watch characters trade bodily fluids for humor. Bravo.

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Film Friday: The Usual Suspects (1995)

The Usual Suspects is a neo-noir crime thriller with an intensely intelligent plot that twists and turns and wraps a riddle within an enigma as it tricks the audience with their own preconceptions. Add in stellar acting from an incredible cast, a pitch perfect soundtrack, an absolute lack of mistakes or bad choices by a creative director, and easily the most daring script of any film I’ve seen, and you’ve got one of my favorite movies and a movie you must see.

To discuss this film will require MAJOR SPOILERS. Do NOT read this if you haven’t seen the film.

Directed by Bryan Singer, The Usual Suspects ostensibly is a story of a robbery gone wrong, but that’s hardly a fair description. When all is said and done, The Usual Suspects is a mystery, where different characters give you different facts that you need to piece together to decide what really happened.

The story begins with small-time criminal Verbal Kint (Kevin Spacey) telling U.S. Customs Agent Dave Kujan (Chazz Palminteri) what happened the prior night when a group of criminals attacked a boat in San Pedro harbor. Verbal appears to be the only survivor and he has given testimony in exchange for immunity. Kujan is racing against the clock to question him before he is released. According to Verbal, the robbery began several weeks prior in New York, when the police brought in four hardened criminals (and Verbal) for a lineup after a truck was highjacked. This group consists of Dean Keaton (Gabriel Byrne), Michael McManus (Stephen Baldwin), Todd Hockney (Kevin Pollak), and Fenster (Benicio del Toro). They decide to use the opportunity of the lineup to work together on a heist in NYC. After they pull off the heist, they fly to Los Angeles to meet the fence who will sell what they’ve stolen. In L.A., they are forced to perform a robbery for a criminal legend named Keyser Sӧze, who may or may not exist. Sӧze, supposedly, is a ruthless, omnipresent Turkish criminal mastermind who uses other criminals to commit his crimes. The robbery involves forty million dollars in dope and an equal amount of cash on a ship in San Pedro harbor.

This sounds straight forward, but director Singer does something daring. As Verbal tells this story, Agent Kujan keeps interrupting him with facts that Verbal either does not know or has lied about. At the same time, FBI Agent Jack Baer (Giancarlo Esposito) provides us with additional facts. For example, there were no drugs and it appears the true purpose of the raid was to kill a man who could identify Sӧze. When Kujan finally confronts Verbal with what Kujan believes happened, Verbal breaks down and agrees with everything Kujan says. He is then released. But as he leaves, we learn one more crucial fact -- Verbal is identified as Keyser Sӧze by a witness pulled out of the harbor. In this way, Singer presents four different versions of what happened. Verbal tells one story. Within Verbal’s story, we are given a second version by Dean Keaton, the man Kujan thinks is the leader of the group and who Kujan ultimately believes to be Keyser Sӧze. Agent Kujan and Baer give us a third version based on the facts Kujan collected from before the robbery and Baer collects from the harbor. Finally, we are given what appears to be the truth when we learn at the end that Verbal is Sӧze.

This alone makes this a brave script. The use of the four different version plot device (which dates back to Kurosawa’s Rashomon) is very difficult to pull off and extremely confusing when done poorly. Moreover, unlike prior films that used this and which always told the audience what really happened in the final version, Singer only provides some verified facts and leaves it to the audience to piece the truth together. That is a daring choice because it’s by no means certain the audience will be able to put this back together, and a confused audience is an unhappy audience.

What’s more, Singer doubles down on the difficulty by mixing up the movie’s chronology: it starts the night before, moves forward to today, backs up several weeks, swings back to the present, moves back to a different point in the past, and so on, as different parts of the story are told. There are many dangers to this approach. For example, the audience may not be able to put the story back in the right order. Moreover, because the audience knows the ending right at the beginning, there is a real danger the attack on the harbor will lose its drama because the audience knows how it will end. But Singer overcomes these issues brilliantly both by maintaining a strong pace and by giving you characters who seem so determined, so in control, and so competent that you don’t believe they can fail, even though you’ve already been shown that they do.

But even more than these issues, Singer takes a tremendous chance in that ultimately we know nothing of what really happened. Indeed, when we analyze the facts presented and we consider what we actually know to be true, rather than what we think we know, we quickly discover that we can’t believe anything we’ve been told throughout the movie. The only facts we know for certain are (1) Verbal is Keyser Sӧze, (2) Verbal and a group of men attacked the harbor, (3) the four criminals (Keaton, McManus, Fenster and Hockney) are dead, and (4) Keaton’s girlfriend is dead. That’s it. Nothing else in Verbal’s story can be verified and most of it can even be dismissed out of hand. Thus, Singer essentially shatters the entire film. The danger with this approach is that it risks alienating the audience. Audiences don’t like feeling like they’ve been misled or like their time has been wasted, and nothing feels more like having your time wasted than being told that you can’t believe anything you’ve seen over the last two hours. But Singer does something very clever here. Despite telling the audience quite plainly that nothing they’ve just seen can be believed, he also gives them one moment of truth -- when Verbal’s true identity is revealed. This allows the audience to feel that they really do know what happened; indeed, strangely, we take this fact and instantly reassemble the story into a new narrative that makes sense to us. . . even though none of the pieces we use to reassemble that narrative are true.

And that brings us to the twist. Using a twist in a movie is very risky because a poorly done twist, i.e. one that isn’t organic to the story, feels cheap and tacked on and leaves the audience feeling cheated. But making a twist feel organic and still keeping the audience from seeing the twist too early is very difficult and often requires careful slight of hand.

Yet, despite this difficulty, Singer hides nothing. Indeed, from frame one, we are told this will be a mystery and the question will be “who killed Dean Keaton.” Thus, the audience is put on alert from the beginning. Then, throughout the film, Singer constantly gives clues as to Keyser Sӧze’s true identity. For example, Sӧze and Verbal have the same lighter and Verbal clearly is playing with Kujan -- something that should be out of character if he is who he says he is. Yet, the audience overlooks these clues because Verbal doesn't fit our preconceived notions about what a criminal mastermind must look like and act like. In other words, we simply find it impossible to believe that the meek cripple is the Satanesque villain we are looking for (Kujan, by the way, makes the same mistake and indeed tells Verbal repeatedly that a "stupid," "cripple" like Verbal could only be a pawn). Instead, we find it much easier to believe that the menacing, brooding Dean Keaton is Sӧze, just as Kujan urges us to believe.


Which one is the master criminal?


Singer takes a huge risk here that the audience will see the twist coming and link Verbal to Sӧze right away -- which would ruin the movie. He even adds to that risk by warning us that we need to look beyond our perceived notions. He does this when Verbal warns Kujan: “for the cops, there’s no mystery to the street. If you think some guy did it, then you’re going to find you’re right.” And that is exactly what we do in the film: we size up the suspects and we pick the guy it usually would be -- Dean Keaton. Singer deserves tremendous credit for correctly calculating that we would ignore the clues.

That’s why this is easily one of the smartest films you will ever see. It is so tightly written, so daring in its choices, so mistake free, so perfectly acted, and so expertly assembled that a movie that could have been a horrific jumble in other hands turns into an intelligent puzzle in Singer’s hands. And Singer takes real risks and overcomes them brilliantly by skillfully deceiving us with our own preconceptions. The American Film Institute ranked this the tenth best mystery film of all time, I would rank it higher.

Not bad for a six million dollar film no one wanted to fund.

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