Steve Carell has been known for the most part for his comedy roles although this time its the center of a some what comedy movie trying to explain the 2008 financial meltdown and somehow it actually worked, like this movie legit probably made many in the audience care about banking and numbers and all that Wall Street crap and that alone deserves some damn respect, Im not into trading but now days I think we all talk and follow the trends in certain financial sectors like crypto. The Big Short takes this whole mess where millions of people lost there homes and jobs, turns it into something you can actually sit through for two hours without wanting to fast forward as they actually make it entertaining with funny interventions scenes trying to dumb down things and make them fun, its got Christian Bale walking around barefoot doing math in his head while listening to death metal, Steve Carell being angry at literally everyone, mostly complaining about how institutions scam people something totally believable, the way director McKay decided to tell this story is all over the place in the best way possible, breaking the fourth wall every five seconds, having Ryan Gosling talk straight to you like your his therapy patient, throwing in Margot Robbie sitting in a bubble bath drinking champagne to explain what mortgage bonds are, because apparently thats the only way to keep peoples attention when talking about securities, and I aint even mad about it becuase at least someone tried to make finance watchable for normal people who dont work on Wall Street.
- IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1596363/
- Platform: PRIME VIDEO
Rottentomatoes Rating
Christian Bale absolutely killed it playing this weird numbers guy Michael Burry, whos got a glass eye from some childhood deficiency from my understanding, walks around his office with no shoes on like some kind of barefoot math wizard, drums on everything like he is in a metal band, somehow sees the whole economic collapse coming before anyone else because he actually bothered to read what was exactly in thousands of mortage documents that everyone else just approve without much thought. The sound during this scenes actually feel like some kind of brain wash, Bale nails every single second of it without trying to make Burry likeable or sympathetic, hes just this guy who sees the math, doesnt understand why everyone else is so stupid about it, probably thinks the rest of Wall Street should be fired for incompetence, you actually like how awkward the guy is. But the real surprise for me was Steve Carell, because damn this guy showed he can do way more than his casually comedy roles, here he plays Mark Baum, who is based on a real guy named Steve Eisman and hes so angry about everything happening around him, not angry for himself but angry for everyone else getting screwed over by these banks and rating agency who know exactly what there doing but dont care because there making millions in fees. Carell got this whole backstory about his brother Paul who killed himself, you can feel that weight when this flashback scenes came out until finally he broke at some point, like this guy used to believe the system worked, that people were decent and tried to do the right thing, but then he watched his brother die, now hes watching millions of regular people getting lied to and cheated, it just breaks something in him that never really gets fixed, the way Carell plays that slow burn rage through the whole movie is probably some of the best work he has ever done.
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I trully enjoy how the movie tries to make something very complex so easy and even giving backstory of how everything potentially started, they dont go that much into complex terms but when they do simply try to dumb them down in a fun way, sometimes maybe to hard with all the celebrity cameos explaining stuff to us, like were five year olds who need Margot Robbie in a bathtub or Anthony Bourdain talking about fish stew to get what a CDO is, some of it was funny and clever but other might felt like too much. That Jenga tower scene where Ryan Gosling is stacking blocks and knocking them down to show how the mortgage bonds worked, that was actually pretty smart, it helped visualize something thats normally just boring numbers and percentages on a spreadsheet but then they keep doing it over and over, different celebrities popping up every twenty minutes, after awhile I was like okay I get it, move on with the story please because I came here for a movie not a finance class. Ryan Gosling basically plays the same smooth talking character he always plays, hes Jared Vennett whos really Greg Lippmann from Deutsche Bank, he is the narrator, very entertaining to watch, brings some energy to scenes that would just be people sitting in offices yelling about bonds and swaps if he wasnt there because he was constantly making fun of everyone else in the room and he is the only smart guy seen everything unfold just that nobody believes him, but its nothing new from him, at this point I feel like Gosling could do this kind of character without even trying. Brad Pitt doesnt get much screen time as Ben Rickert but he is solid when he shows up with his weird paranoia about the government and germs, he play this retired trader who helps out the young guys from a self funded Investment Fund, he gets the best line in the whole movie when he tells them dont dance after there celebrating making money off the collapse when he says "every one percent unemployment goes up forty thousand people die", it just shuts down there whole celebration real quick, reminds you that yeah your making money but your betting against regular peoples lives and homes which is pretty fucked up when you think about it for more than two seconds.
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The whole documentery style with the shaky cameras and random zoom ins on peoples faces I find so entertaining because it felt like a gimmick but one that works keeping you watching, although its true that it doesnt add anything real to the story it just camera work to make things engaging, like I get that McKay was trying to make it feel urgent and chaotic to match the subject at hand, the financial world falling apart and all that. The movie also draggs during sometimes to the point I was just tired and wanting things to settle down for a minute so I could focus on the actual conversations happening, like when Bale lay down on the floor just waiting for the Housing Market to crash but kept going up. That scene where they go to Miami and start looking at all the empty houses, that was probably the most effective part of the whole movie for me, because it stops being about numbers and bonds and becomes about actual people losing there homes and turning those numbers into a reality, seeing them talk to that guy who was paying rent but his landlord wasnt paying the mortage, so now hes getting kicked out anyway, that hit way harder than any of the technical explanations about tranches and credit default swaps specially when they are out of a gas station living of their car, because it showed the real human cost of all this financial bullshit that the banks were pulling. The part where they meet the strippers who somehow have five houses and a condo, all on subprime morgages with adjustable rates that are about to explode, that was hilarious and diabolic at the same time, because your laughing at how absurd it is but also realizing holy shit the whole system is built on absolutely nothing except lies and fake paperwork, like if strippers working at a club can get approved for millions in loans with no real income verification, then yeah the whole thing is obviously going to collapse eventually and take everyone down with it.
Overall the entire movie felt like an exaggeration that did happen, solid performances especially from Bale and Carell who really brought there A game almost everyone on this movie did great, good writing that made a boring topic interesting enough to keep me watching for over two hours and it actually made me angry about stuff that happened fifteen years ago, which means it did its job getting me to care about banking corruption and fraud and all the ways regular people got screwed. The ending felt rushed but it didnt matter because everything was lay down, when it shows that nobody went to jail, the banks all got bailouts paid for by regular taxpayers who had nothing to do with creating the mess, within a few years Wall Street was doing the exact same shit again with different names for there scams, calling them bespoke tranche opportunities or whatever fancy term they came up with to hide the fact that its the same garbage repackaged, its the kind of ending that makes you think we are all living in a simulation because how can this things keep happening?, I respect that McKay didnt try to sugar coat it or give us some fake happy resolution where the good guys win and justice prevails because thats not what happened in real life. I would give it a solid 8 out of 10, because any movie that can make banking feel important without putting me to sleep, has done something right plus Bales nailing the role felt so good.
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