Humor, cynicism, enlightenment, and cynicism, all serve to illuminate the murkiness of the real estate bubble crisis. Played by a wonderful ensemble of actors doing their best this film is a must see for anyone who's owned a savings bond or a share of stock.
The film is steered by Gosling's narration. He's the savvy "big bank" trader that usher Carell's small firm into their early venture with Credit Default Swaps. This was all based on the foundation of work done by an eccentric MD who chose to be an investor over medicine (Bale). Pitt comes in as a former trader who had retired but agreed to use his connections to help two small fish get their foothold in shorting mortgages. The story is quite a mixture of period art direction, flashbacks, and a great number of factoids explaining definitions and characters relating to the real-life story. Interestingly, not all the stories touch each other.
Gosling was perfectly typecast as the smooth, fast talking, in-charge guy. Carell was spot on as a hyper, perpetually upset person and Bale oddly cast as the off-center guy with a ton of "issues". (Those issues seemed to feed his ability to focus on deconstructing mortgage bonds to find what a mess they were.)
Part of the cinematic payoff for the "shorters" was finally realizing that they successfully bet against the American/world economy and that those who perpetrated the crisis survived and thrived.
This is a different kind of film. Not quite a comedy nor drama and too rambunctious to be a documentary or docudrama. It seems to plow new dirt between entertainment, history, and delving the truth in understandable terms. Certainly worth seeing and very memorable.
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Topic - 'The Big Short': Go punch a banker . . . . - Billy Wonka 14:48:58 12/23/15 (13)
- Seems eerily close to Wolf of Wall Street. - geoffkait 07:19:22 12/24/15 (9)
- Except there's no... - mkuller 10:28:14 12/24/15 (8)
- Like hell! Margot takes a nice bubble bath while explaining things. * - Billy Wonka 10:43:22 12/24/15 (7)
- only one problem with that scene - mbnx01 09:07:04 12/26/15 (1)
- Echo, echo, echo.......:-) - geoffkait 15:28:12 12/26/15 (0)
- Now, that I would pay to see. Today at 1:40 to be exact. Nt - geoffkait 06:18:50 12/25/15 (3)
- Too many bubbles. What a ripoff!! Nt - geoffkait 14:08:17 12/25/15 (2)
- She did talk dirty. * - Billy Wonka 19:43:20 12/25/15 (1)
- She's got quite a mouth on her, I'll just leave it at that. Nt - geoffkait 05:41:22 12/26/15 (0)
- Sorry... - mkuller 13:55:10 12/24/15 (0)
- RE: 'The Big Short': It's on my holiday list . . . . - Steve O 17:09:10 12/23/15 (0)
- Based on the Michael Lewis book... - mkuller 14:52:49 12/23/15 (1)
- They are all based on real humans.....that's what makes it..... - Billy Wonka 15:34:07 12/23/15 (0)