La gran apuesta

Harry Knowles once wrote a review of Das Boot that said the movie was so well made that you'd find yourself rooting for Nazi sailors trying to sink American ships. So here. You find yourself rooting for clever "outsiders and weirdos," as one of them puts it, who saw what nobody else wanted to see -- that an immense structure of mortgage based securities was doomed to collapse because it rested on the backs of subprime borrowers who couldn't support the weight and should never have been loaned the money. We have been taught by generations of fiction to identify with characters who are outsiders and rebels. Because these guys are smart, because they are antisocial and because they were laughed at by smug fools who believed the conventional wisdom, you identify with them, and you wait anxiously for their vindication. Then you realize that their vindication means the collapse of the American economy. They were the guys on the Titanic who knew what the iceberg meant and booked reserved seats in the lifeboats.

Michael Lewis, from whose book the movie was adapted, got his training at Salomon Brothers in the mid-80s, as mortgage based securities were being invented. (There's an early shout-out to Lew Ranieri, the Salomon trader who invented them.) As anyone knows who's read Lewis's memoir of those days, Liar's Poker, the culture at Salomon was that your job was to be smarter than everybody else in the bond market, understand values better, and know what other traders were going to do before they knew it themselves. If you were smart enough, you deserved whatever you took away from somebody less smart on the other side of the trade. That's why Lewis admires his protagonists and that, despite a thick coating of moral outrage, is the heart of the movie. The guys who shorted the housing market weren't any more virtuous or less greedy than the great majority of complacent, conventionally minded bankers who believed that the trees would keep growing all the way up to the sky. They just saw more clearly and had plenty of nerve and faith in their own judgment. If they had been wrong, as shorts often are, they and their clients would have been wiped out. When they turned out right, they took the money and kept it, even if some of them felt guilty about it.

I know somewhat about this area, having litigated some of the aftermath. The celebrity cameo explanations of subprime debt, collateralized debt obligations, and synthetic CDOs are not only simple but accurate -- the two involving Anthony Bourdain and Selena Gomez are downright elegant. The key concept of the credit default swap comes out nicely through the dialogue -- a chance to buy fire insurance on the house down the street just before it catches fire. There are a couple of more points that could have used the same thing, especially when people start talking about "FICO scores." It could also have been a little more clear that the eventual collapse was delayed because the smarter investment banks like Goldman finally woke up, saw it coming, unloaded their CDO inventory on investors who were still asleep, and cut their losses by buying swaps themselves. But this is a smart, entertaining telling of an outrageous true story. It deserves all the praise it has gotten, and maybe an Oscar for best adapted screenplay. If it teaches people without a financial background a little of what went on, it will be more than a momentary entertainment. But it will certainly entertain.

'The Big Short' fascinated me into seeing it without hesitation, had always wanted to see it but it took me a while to get a chance to do so. Have a lot of respect for any film that takes on complex serious subjects that absolutely should be portrayed and the talented cast. While the awards attention (particularly for the script) and critical acclaim (almost universal) interested me further. Plus it looked good.

Good 'The Big Short' indeed was. Very good in fact and while it was not quite perfect it is deserving of the acclaim it got and still gets. Not quite one of the best films of the year for me but very close, with the good things being many and being exceptional in quality. 'The Big Short' took on a subject that needed to be told and holds relevance today and found myself admiring how it approached it while also making something of very high quality as an overall film.

Structurally, 'The Big Short' can get a little complicated and not always easy to follow. Never incoherent as such, just sometimes not always as clear as it could have been.

It definitely would have benefitted from doing less than it did, perhaps not having as much going on and having less characters.

However, 'The Big Short' is well-made with mostly slick photography, despite the odd shakiness that distracts a little, and a fine eye for detail. Furthermore it is smartly directed, keeping things involving throughout the over two hour length, paced in a way that it doesn't feel that long and one is not feeling the seconds.

All the cast are terrific and embody their characters instead of just playing them. Christian Bale's confident quirky performance rightly garnered him an Oscar nomination and Ryan Gosling has one of the film's more challenging roles and essential to anchoring it and he is suitably despicable, not a side we see much from him and it was both interesting and slightly unsettling to watch. Steve Carrell plays it straight while still adopting a jokiness that doesn't feel out of place, he is fun to watch while showing an anger and torment that makes him moving. Brad Pitt does well too and the cameos don't jar or bog things down.

The script is one of the reasons why 'The Big Short' works as well as it does and deserved its Oscar win. It does a great job entertaining and informing and doing it in a way that's taut, smart and making one feel the right emotions. Even though there are issues with the structure, the story is still incredibly compelling, with the interconnecting subplots being involving and developing the compellingly real characters well, and have a lot of admiration for its handling of the subject. It's a very serious, brave subject and not an easy one to bring to film but a subject that's a relevant and important one to tell, 'The Big Short' does remarkably in this aspect. It's always engaging, and it is also funny and informative while also making me feel shocked, angry and emotional as the events unfolded.

Overall, very good with many wonderful things. 8/10 Bethany Cox

I appreciate that The Big Short tries to dumb down the housing crisis of 2008, but, apparently, I'm still not smart enough to fully understand it. A lot of this movie went over my head, but I grasped the generalities and it kept me entertained, so I applaud it for that. This film also featured some great performances by the cast, who lose themselves in their respective roles. This movie is a downer, but it's an educational downer.

I have to admit that I don't understand all the intricacies of the bond markets that were being manipulated here. Whether one is a Wall Street maven or not isn't the issue. The fact is that people sold mortgages to others who had no business getting into them. I recall a 60 Minutes report on the bubble before the crash took place. The expert had them drive through a desert area, filled with enormous houses, all of which were in default. If one looked in the windows of these, you could see that some of the tenants had stripped all kinds of fixtures and walked away. There were two types of buyers, it seemed. Those that were trying for the fast buck and those that really had no clue what they were getting into. The balloon mortgages took them from affordable to bankruptcy. This was unsustainable and it wasn't long before the banks found themselves with armloads of houses and buyers with hopeless debt. The guys in the movie are aware, but, for the most part, aren't all that sympathetic to these foibles. They go in to make money and they manage to do it. The whole thing that overrides this entire film is that all the evidence was right there, but the greed of most of the parties supersedes all of that. I thought this was a fine movie with a superb lesson. To the new generation. You may not be entitled to have whatever you want without paying your dues.

Nothing Small about "The Big Short"

"The Big Short" is based on the book with the same name by financial journalist Michael Lewis. It is about collateralized debt obligations, subprime mortgages, credit default swaps and bundling. A snoozer right? Not one bit. "The Big Short" is more entertaining than most films in the cineplex this holiday season. Even if you don't know much about the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007-08, you will recognize a quality film and want to know more about the world economic collapse when the film is over.

The film uses a multitude of techniques to tell the story. There are fourth-wall breaking monologues, a model in a bubble bath explaining economics as well as a singing idol and a celebrity chef using metaphors of cooking and gambling to explain the economic crisis. There are jump cuts, slow motion, foreshadowing and flash backs. The filmmakers use any and all tricks to explain a complicated mess of financial chicanery in order to help the audience understand. The banks, mortgage brokers, the credit ratings agencies and the government manipulated people in the nation and world into investing in worthless packages of bonds, and it behooves the director and writer, Adam McKay, to use all cinematic tricks to explain and untangle the financial corruption. The miracle is that the film deciphers the economic melt-down well while entertaining its audience.

The acting is stellar from the stars to the bit players. They aren't just playing a role, they embody characters during a remarkable time in history. My mother thinks Steve Carrell was the best actor in the film, for she did not even recognize him at first. He plays against character and she liked that. However, my mother had never seen Carrell in "The Office." His character, Mark Baum, is much like the boss from that television series. However, in "The Big Short", he plays it straight. He is a boss of a fund under the umbrella of Morgan Stanley (but it's not Morgan Stanley, and his team likes to point out), and he is on a mission to bring down banks, to show them up, and to prove he's been right about the financial warning signs. He is betting against the hand that feeds him, Morgan Stanley.

I preferred Christian Bale's performance as Michael Burry, an unselfconscious, manic math genius. I haven't seen that frightening look in Bale's eyes since "American Psycho", but this time he's only killing the mortgage backed securities market. Meanwhile, Brad Pitt, under- playing another disaffected former banker, Brad Rickert, helps two friends make millions while they bet against terrible investments, or "play short" the mortgage market. His backstory is revealed steadily and in a way that makes us wonder why he briefly got back into the investment "game." Even Ryan Gosling makes his mark in this star-studded cast playing the prescient "Jared Vennett." Remember, all the characters in the film are based on real people. And that is what makes it so remarkable.

The other major players in the film are Bear Stearns, Morgan Stanley, and a slew of investment houses who at best ignore the coming financial crisis or at worst, colluded in its creation. From the realtors selling the mortgages, to the banks loaning at subprime, to the banks bundling the worthless packages, they were all making too much money to want to stop. This is exactly the kind of over-exuberance that occurred in the 1920s stock market crash, but few payed attention then or in 2007.

"The Big Short" is a dramatized film of true events. And to make sure we understand, the actors break the fourth wall several times to tell us what part is true to the detail and what part is fictionalized to make it more dramatic. But if you are still incredulous, read the book. The events are all sadly true, and we are still paying for it.

Rating: Pay full price (but you might want to see it twice.)

It will take at least two viewings to catch half of what is embedded in this film. This film is entertaining, educational and relevant.

Peace, Tex Shelters