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For a movie depicting a few months in 2008 in which the effects are still being felt this was I thought a compelling account of the Wall Street/Lehman/Goldman/Banks disaster.
A bunch of mid level actors play the central characters in this drama , none better than William Hurt playing Hank Paulson , can you make a person like Paulson a sympathetic figure?, in this he comes across as having the weight of the world on his shoulders, getting physically sick from the burden of being the man in charge. I at least felt for the guy, it's hard at times to figure out in reality who were the "bad guys" in the real life crisis that happened.
I think what works in this telling is that you basically have the main players in the drama represented but you see them only in this crisis mode for the most part, except Buffet played by Ed Asner making multi billion decisions while out getting ice cream with his grand daughters.
Paul Giamatti's Ben Bernanke is great , silent, whispering and brooding , Billy Crudup's Timothy Gei"loaningthner is seen making huge decisions while out jogging , it's that kind of movie , things happened quickly and at times Paulson's team change their minds on the fly about how to proceed and frankly they don't come out looking good for it.
The idea of "loaning" the banks money which eventually is what happened was broached and dismissed by Paulson several times , when they saw it was all they could do they go to DC with three sheets of paper and the politicians can't get around the fact that one it's only three pages.....needs to be a lot longer, that was kinda of funny and frustrating to see how things like that might work, that bill failed the first vote but then passed.
James Woods as Dick Fuld comes out as the biggest prick and I thought the movie made it seem at times like he was the main cause , maybe he was the symbol of all that was wrong?
You know how this ends and how it's still affecting the world , but for all that it was still enjoyable.
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