Flick of The Day: Margin Call

The financial crisis which began in the United States in 2008 and whose effect is still being felt throughout the world today, no more so than in Europe has been quite the boon to Hollywood. It was such a shocking collapse, particularly on Wall St that it has so many of the elements for great drama. On the whole though, cinema's various efforts at documenting the crisis have been a hit and miss affair. In terms of documentaries, Charles Ferguson's Inside Job stands out as the best account while the dramatisations have been a poor lot, ranging from the competent Too Big to Fail to the downright awful Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. It is a delight then to see an independent film which is almost pitch perfect in its handling of what is a great story, today's flick of the day is Margin Call.

Margin Call

Directed by newcomer J.C. Chandor, Margin Call is set in an unnamed American investment bank just before the crisis begins to take shape documenting a 36 hour before a collapse. As the film opens, junior analysts Seth played by Penn Badgley and Peter played by an excellent Zachary Quinto are chatting to senior salesman Will Emerson, played by Paul Bettany in a big swinging dick mode while a dreaded Human Resources team walk the floor giving people the dreaded tap on the shoulder. One of those removed is Seth and Peter's boss Eric, played by the always excellent Stanley Tucci. Eric is to say the least surprised and angry about losing his job not least because he believes he has stumbled across something damaging on the companies books. Before he is removed from the building, he passes a USB key to Peter and asks him to investigate this further. Later that night, the eager beaver takes a look and realises that the bank is in serious trouble with Eric's model predicting that unless they shed some decidedly dodgy assets they will go bust. Panicked, Peter calls Seth and Will back into the office and before long his analysis is in the hands of Will's boss Sam, played by Kevin Spacey, channelling his inner Gordon Gekko. As the night wears on and the bank moves into crisis mode, the information moves up the chain of command to executives played by Simon Baker, Demi Moore and a scene stealing turn by Jeremy Irons. Each of them is left with a choice, do they attempt to get out now or go down fighting?

The really interesting aspect of this film is that it doesn't focus on the why? element of the financial crisis as has been the case in other films. This means that the audience is never bombarded with financial lingo and terminology. In fact, the problems are never explained to any great degree. We are merely treated to Bettany, Spacey et al looking shocked at a computer screen or a a piece of paper. It can be over done but this allows the film to focus on the moral questions of the banker's actions. Ultimately it boils down to will they choose to dump these assets on their clients and counterparties the next morning as the markets open? This is the real drama of the piece, how low will you go?

John Tuld: So you think we might have put a few people out of business today. That its all for naught. You've been doing that everyday for almost forty years Sam. And if this is all for naught then so is everything out there. Its just money; its made up. Pieces of paper with pictures on it so we don't have to kill each other just to get something to eat. It's not wrong. And it's certainly no different today than its ever been. 1637, 1797, 1819, 37, 57, 84, 1901, 07, 29, 1937, 1974, 1987-Jesus, didn't that fuck up me up good-92, 97, 2000 and whatever we want to call this. It's all just the same thing over and over; we can't help ourselves. And you and I can't control it, or stop it, or even slow it. Or even ever-so-slightly alter it. We just react. And we make a lot money if we get it right. And we get left by the side of the side of the road if we get it wrong. And there have always been and there always will be the same percentage of winners and losers. Happy foxes and sad sacks. Fat cats and starving dogs in this world. Yeah, there may be more of us today than there's ever been. But the percentages-they stay exactly the same. 

Very loosely modelled on the demise of Lehman Brothers, it really could have been about any bank and there is much to enjoy if you like to see arrogant bankers speculating about each other's salary and sneering at the general public for their lack of understanding of the financial Armageddon about to hit.

Seth Bregman: Did you really make two and half million bucks last year? 

Will Emerson: Yeah... I did. 

Peter Sullivan: What do you do with all that money? 

Will Emerson: I don't know really. It goes pretty quick. 

Will Emerson: Well the tax man takes half of it up front. So now you got what... million and a quarter. Mortgage grabs another 300K, I gave 150 to my parents to live off, so now you got what? 

Peter Sullivan: Eight hundred. 

Will Emerson: I bought two cars last year for 150 total. Probably another 100 eating... 25 on clothes, put 400 away for a rainy day... 

Seth Bregman: Smart. 

Will Emerson: And what's that? 

Peter Sullivan: 125 left. 

Will Emerson: I spent 76,520 dollars on booze, dancers, and whores. 

Peter Sullivan: 76,520? 

Will Emerson: Yeah, kinda shocked me, although I was able to write most of it off as an entertainment expense!

A fine drama, this is a promising début from Chandor and he makes great use of an ensemble cast. It doesn't dwell on the causes of the crisis and the wider issues therein but concentrates on the human drama and is all the better for it. The back biting and infighting as the firm goes through its long night of the soul is entertaining and compelling viewing.

Flick of The Day: Glengarry Glen Ross

David Mamet was one of the great voices in American theatre in the late 70's and early 80's. As a playwright, he was a founding member of the legendary Atlantic Theatre Company, winning acclaim for his 1984 play Glengarry Glen Ross, which he adapted for the screen in this 1992 drama which is today's flick of the day. Mamet's writing is heavy in dialogue which is itself fast paced and peppered with scatological language, and it reeks of the stage. However it is the kind of rich language that draws the best out of actors. Apart from his theatrical work, he has a rich body of film work with particular highlights being his Oscar winning script for The Verdict and The Untouchables.

Glengarry Glen Ross

A simple tale of the goings on behind the scenes at a real estate office in Chicago, this film has an ensemble cast of some of the best acting talent in recent memory. Al Pacino is cocky top salesman Ricky Roma, Jack Lemmon is the ageing salesman living on past glories, Alan Arkin and Ed Harris are disgruntled and desperate while Kevin Spacey is the much put upon office manager. In a role created for the film, Alec Baldwin steals the film as a hard nosed motivational speaker. Times are hard at Premiere Properties with the pressure on the salesmen to deliver land sales in a downturn. They bitch and moan about the leads they are given and generally fail to sell apart from the big swinging dick Ricky Roma. The plot centres around a theft at the office but ultimately this is a character study of men under pressure, with a tense atmosphere reminiscent of something like 12 Angry Men.

Perhaps the strength of James Foley's direction is to keep the camera moving around the theatre like sets, to make this feel less like a play. It is not fully successful however as you can't really escape the origins of the tale. Mamet's dialogue is his greatest strength but it often feel over the top and almost unrealistic here. That said, it is terribly enjoyable to see greats like Pacino and Lemmon and Spacey chew through the scenery in capital lettered verbiage. 

Blake: You got leads. Mitch & Murray paid good money. Get their names to sell them. You can't close the leads you're given, you can't close shit, *you are* shit, hit the bricks pal, and beat it, 'cause you are going *out*. 

Shelley Levene: The leads are weak. 

Blake: "The leads are weak." The fucking leads are weak? You're weak. I've been in this business fifteen years... 

Dave Moss: What's your name? 

Blake: Fuck you. That's my name. 

[Moss laughs] 

Blake: You know why, mister? 'Cause you drove a Hyundai to get here tonight, I drove an eighty thousand dollar BMW. *That's* my name.

A tour de force then, but also a dark look at the harsh realities of the working world and the lengths people will go to, to survive. Lemmon's salesman is a loser but at heart a good family man while Pacino's Roma is a slimy charlatan yet one is a failure and the other prospers. There is a morality tale in there somewhere. 

Very much a character study, this is worth seeing if only for Mamet's dialogue and the excellent performances from the ensemble cast. It couldn't be called a compelling drama for very little happens but for sharp dialogue and tense well acted scenes, this is hard to beat. 

Flick of The Day: L.A Confidential

The work of American novelist James Ellroy is notoriously hard to adapt for the screen, written as it is in short staccato sentences with dense plotting involving numerous strands and characters. This is its strength as fiction but obviously harder to carry onto the big screen. If this in done badly, you get a flop like Brian De Palma's The Black Dahlia, if done well, you get today's flick of the day, L.A Confidential one of the best films of the 1990's and a multiple Oscar winner.

L.A. Confidential

Apart from a great script from director Curtis Hanson and Brian Helgeland which successfully reduces the scope of Ellroy's novel while still retaining the core story, the other main strength of this movie is a cast to die for. Russell Crowe is a violent yet good hearted Detective Bud White, James Cromwell is his Machiavellian commanding officer, Captain Dudley Smith. Guy Pearce is Edmund Exeley an up and coming strait laced star of the LAPD. Kevin Spacey, is Hollywood Jack Vincennes, an amoral cop to the stars. Kim Basinger is Lynn Bracken, a high class call girl whose career is managed by millionaire Pierce Morehouse Patchett, a brilliant turn from David Strathairn and finally Danny DeVito as the sleazy magazine editor Sid Hudgens.

Set in 1950s Los Angeles, the film opens on Christmas Eve when a group of drunken detectives attack some newly apprehended suspects in an event the press dub, "Bloody Christmas". Thereafter in an attempt to clean up the force, the top brass seek to prosecute the officers involved. Keen to move up, Exeley agrees to testify against his own colleagues, making him a hated figure while Bud White and Jack Vincennes refuse. The film then follows the rise and fall of these three detectives and their boss, Captain Smith. They become embroiled in the investigation of a shocking massacre at a late night coffee shop that may or may not involve organised crime. However all is not as it seems, and  an intricate plot leads to a great twisting conclusion involving drugs, prostitution and police corruption that goes to the very top. 

With a plot dense enough to match the great of the genre like Chinatown or The Big Sleep, this is a great detective yarn. Hanson has managed to perfectly capture the glamour and sleazy underbelly of post-war Los Angeles. Down to a tee, everything feels perfectly of the period in terms of fashion, decor and location. It sucks you into the period and tells a great story.The film received 9 Oscar nominations but lost in almost all categories due to the unstoppable juggernaut that was Titanic. It is shocking now to think that a film as poorly written and acted as Titanic outshone this picture but such are the unknowing ways of the Academy. One of the few awards it did win was for its screenplay, adapted as I've said by Hanson and Helgeland which is well deserved as the film is endlessly quotable.

Bud White: Merry Christmas. 

Lynn Bracken: Merry Christmas to you, officer. 

Bud White: That obvious, huh? 

Lynn Bracken: It's practically stamped on your forehead

This really is a must see film, combining a great cast with a fine script to produce a really old-fashioned actor driven movie, the kind that studios either don't want to make or are unable of making. They seem more and more interested in producing thrash in a 3D glaze with each passing day. I am no luddite and have never been against the use of advancing technology in cinema but it should not be at at the expense of basic storytelling. It is telling that this film lost out to effects driven schlock like Titanic, telling and disappointing. A great film.

Flick of The Day: The Usual Suspects

Pete Postlethwaite passed away earlier this week, aged 64, after a long illness. He was one of the finest character actors of his time, his craggy face and intensity bringing something worthy to even the cheesiest of films. Whether playing a stoic bandleader in Brassed Off or more recently as a fresh off the boat psycho in The Town, he was always good, always memorable. So in tribute, today's film is another one of those small roles that he made more memorable, Mr. Kobayashi in The Usual Suspects.

The Usual Suspects (Special Editon)

Directed by the then painfully hip Bryan Singer, this film was a big hit with critics and audiences upon its release. Another example of neo-noir, its a dialogue heavy for a modern film which is no bad thing and has a nice twisty plot to keep your attention. The film opens with 5 men brought in for a police line-up in New York, the usual suspects of the title. This is a great scene, largely improvised and yet manges to adequately introduce you to all of the main characters. We then flash forward to the aftermath of a shoot out on a Los Angeles pier with 27 men dead. The only remaining member of the 5 is Verbal Kint, Kevin Spacey in an Oscar winning performance and through the format of a police interrogation, Verbal outlines how they got from the line-up to the pier. Like all great thrillers, there is a twist in the tale.

Though this film has a very fine ensemble cast, the real strength of the film is the Oscar winning screenplay by Christopher McQuarrie at the heart of which is the unseen criminal mastermind Keyser Soze. Keyser is represented throughout by his lawyer, Mr Kobayashi. It's a small part but Postlethwaite imbues it with a mysteriousness that sticks with you till the end. Its that element of mystery, of leaving the audience second guessing that makes it entertaining. Halfway through, you are left with the feeling that all is not what it seems. As Vebal Kint puts it:

"The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."

The ending when it comes, is out of left field and you will either love it or hate it, but the getting there, that's the best part. For a film made in 35 days for $5.5m, this is well worth your time.