Movie Review: Margin Call

Anyone want to bet against the chance that with OccupyWallStreet in full swing, the producers of Margin Call haven’t been secretly thanking God about its timeliness as their film debuts today?  National outrage over the 2008 economic crisis hasn’t diminished in the three years since its occurrence as we’re still continuing to try to claw our way out in the aftermath.  In fact with the Occupy movement spreading nationwide and seeming to remain entrenched for the foreseeable future, it don’t get much more timely than a film that analyzes a likely scenario with how the whole thing kicked off and indicts its architects.  And that’s what Margin Call does and does extremely well, with a smart and accessible script and a terrific ensemble to bring it to life.

The thing that resonates about J. C. Chandor’s excellent film, aside from the stellar cast, is how engrossing it manages to be in its matter-of-fact, nonsenationalistic examination of the 2008 crisis.  This is a financial thriller without sexy plot contrivances such as murder, insider trading nor some sort of shady conspiracy.  Rather, it’s a stark analysis of a large financial institution’s (said to be patterned after Lehman Brothers) steps to minimize the damage it will sustain when it’s discovered that their risky financial practices are about to explode and in all likelihood, destroy the company.  The feds aren’t about to bust down the doors, there’s not an army of underlings shredding a Kilimanjaro-sized mountain of incriminating documents, indictments aren’t pending and there’s not some whistleblowing employee who finally found a conscience.  These are just very believable people, portrayed by an A-List cast on top of their game.  If there’s anything sensationalistic about the film is that this can – and in fact probably did – happen in some form or another, and the country paid the price as a result.

The story centers on the ensemble of employees and executives of an unnamed firm in the early stages of the 2008 financial crisis.  A round of layoffs have wiped out a good percentage of the staff, as we see when several lower-level employees have to do the walk of shame through the trading floor as the other nervous employees try not to look, including analysts Peter Williams (co-producer Zachary Quinto) and Seth Bregman (Penn Badgley) and head trader,  Will Emerson (Paul Bettany).  The axe also falls on Stanley Tucci’s Eric Dale, head of risk management and Peter’s and Seth’s boss.  He has to sit through the obligatory, passive aggressive “we wish you the best in future endeavors” – i.e. the corporate fuck-off – given by two condescending HR chicks in power suits.  But before he leaves, he hands a file that he was working on to Peter and tells him, of all things, to be careful with it.

Peter, a 28-year-old former rocket scientist who transitioned to finance because numbers are numbers and the pay is better on Wall Street, crunches the data and discovers that the firm has been relying on an outdated financial formula they use to conduct their business and it’s going to sink the firm…like the very next day.  A harried call is made to Will and later to Will’s boss, Sam Rogers (Kevin Spacey), and then eventually up the chain to Sam’s boss, Jared Cohen (Simon Baker), Eric’s former boss and head of risk management, Sarah Robertson (Demi Moore), and eventually all the way to Mt. Olympus and CEO, John Tuld (Jeremy Irons).  Meetings are called, positions hashed out, some blame assigned and deflected.  Eventually, however, a course of action to take steps to save the firm is made by Tuld.  Consequences with the market, the firm’s reputation and the likely business-killing result to their trading partners be damned, as long as the firm survives.

This is Chandor’s first film, and it’s an impressive debut, both in his writing and direction.  He’s populated the entire thing with rich characters that never test the boundaries of believability and are grounded with realism.  He also fortifies the characters with plenty of their own moments one the side and there’s never any ambiguity about where they stand with the events unfolding.  And his direction is a deft, almost documentary style – minus talking heads – that takes us nicely into the situation.  The audience are all flies on the wall of what is a methodical breakdown over a 24-hour period of the genesis of a financial disaster.  And characters like Will Emerson, Sam Rogers and especially, John Tuld, are our representatives when they need the details explained to them in English.  Chandor also isn’t interested in picking sides of the argument of who’s to blame.  The various POVs are presented in several instances, morality and ethical dilemmas are bantered back and forth, particularly in a climactic dialogue between Tuld and Rogers after the firm’s desperate ploy plays out.

Performances are roundly good, and more often than not, great.  Quinto brings more than a little bit of his Vulcan coolness to Peter, especially considering that he’s the one who finds the pile of shit the horse left on the floor.  In fact, there’s a scene where he’s describing his background and qualifications, particularly his doctoral thesis in engineering in overly technical terms, that one starts looking for pointed ears somewhere on him.  Peter’s handling of the discovery is, forgive the expression, logical, and his story never takes any sort of Hollywood tangent.  He’s not a conflicted hero nor crusader nor whistleblower, but also is not a scumbag.  He identifies the situation, informs the proper people, and the story goes on in a very real-world process from there.  Bettany’s Emerson is a tiny bit of a Wall Street prick but not a raging douche.  He’s quite a bit better than just fine in the role.  Penn Badgley is good as Seth, low man on the totem pole who’s just trying to hang on for dear life as this all plays out around him.  He has a humorous breakdown in a bathroom stall and good camaraderie with Quinto.  Baker portrays upper-level boss wunderkind, Jared Cohen.  I haven’t minded Baker’s work in several things in which I’ve seen him, although I haven’t overly studied him either.  He’s fine as Jared, who’s slick but not shifty, and whom Spacey’s Sam resents but not enough to jeopardize his job.  Demi Moore doesn’t have much to do as Sarah, but she too is fine.

Top marks go to Spacey, who of course revels and excels in films set in offices as we all know, as well as Tucci, who does so much with not a lot of screen time as Eric Dale; and Irons, who doesn’t quite slither around the proceedings as Tuld, but perhaps skitters like a gecko..or a Gekko.  Mary McDonnell has what is either little more than a cameo or a part that was the victim of the editing machine as Sam’s ex-wife.

Margin Call is a well-crafted and well-acted Wall Street piece that couldn’t be more pertinent right now if it tried.

8.0 out of 10