Margin Call

J.C Chandor’s Margin Call has a more than passing resemblance to John Wells’ The Company Men, i.e. lay-offs in the financial sector as the recession begins to bite. However, whereas Wells’ film was more of a sombre effort, particularly focusing on how people who have been let go cope in their personal lives outside of the office, Margin Call takes a more entertaining (if less realistic) view of down-sizing. When investment banker Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci) is sacked he gives a USB drive to Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto) asking him to finish what he has began to investigate. At a loose end Sullivan takes up the challenge and soon discovers that the firm is on it’s knees financially. From there the storyline progresses higher and higher up the management structure until a decision is made that forces everyone, especially floor head Sam Rogers (Kevin Spacey), to question if what they’re doing is morally right. Despite appearances (one character talks in disbelief about how he can get paid so much just for pushing numbers around) Chandor’s film isn’t overly political and pretty much reconfirms what we know already: Money talks and Bullshit walks. Any attempts by the protagonist’s at soul searching aren’t convincingly delivered, but whilst Chandor fails to make any social comment stick, he does nail what it is like to work in the financial sector; Minions get lunch for their masters, trainees are in awe of what everyone gets paid, managers don’t know the names of their staff and, in the films best running gag, the higher up the corporate ladder we go the more the crisis needs to be explained (i.e. dumbed down) in greater detail to Le Grand Fromage’s. In this sense, the film is a bit of a riot, but the comedy isn’t complimented by the dramatic sections that fail to hit home. This is mainly due to the screenplay, which on a few occasions has the characters deliver such unnatural sounding lumpen statements they might as well have had the script in their hands when they said them. This is still well acted though with Spacey, Quinto and Jeremy Irons (as the head honcho) all great fun in their own various ways. Overall this is good stuff, but the ending is a dramatic step too far, and even the top whiz kids on Wall Street will not be able to produce a chart to explain what Paul Bettany’s accent is meant to be.

The OC Film Sting Final Verdict
Fails in its attempts to make serious points, but great acting throughout more than compensates. Rating: 7/10.