The Big Short

Dir: Adam McKay

2015

*****

I liked Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and thought Adam McKay's script for Ant-Man was great but 2015's The Big Short is something quite special from the director who, it is safe to say, has been producing fairly repetitive and rather samey comedy films for quite a while, most of which star Will Ferrell and most of which I absolutely loath. Brad Pitt's production company Plan B hired him to adapt Michael Lewis' The Big Short: Inside The Doomsday Machine, a novel based on the financial crisis of 2008, because they wanted a funny approach but nothing too satirical. If it were up to me Adam McKay would have been one of my last choices but luckily it wasn't, as I would have been wrong. A couple of films have been released on the subject, both Margin Call and Inside Job are very good, Margin Call being the stylish drama and Inside Job the cutting edge documentary, The Big Short sort of comes in from left-field and turns the ins and outs of the financial crisis into understandable entertainment. The two previous films were education and relatively easy to follow but Adam McKay goes one further and gets in a few recognizable faces including singer/actress Selena Gomez, celebrity chief Anthony Bourdain and actress Margot Robbie to explain to the audience exactly how the crisis came about. Selena Gomez sits with economist Richard Thaler at a craps table and explains borrowing, Anthony Bourdain explains different mortgages by comparing them to the ingredients of fish pie and Margot Robbie says something that's probably very important while sipping champagne and bathing in a bubble bath with sea views. Naked. It's this sort of thing that makes The Big Short shine that little bit brighter and gets the attention of audiences who might not be all that interested in learning about economics. Thanks to the film's brilliant script, clever structure and fantastic editing, it soon becomes quite clear that everyone should be paying attention. The last line of dialogue is as eerily poignant as it is important for everyone to understand, so I'm thrilled the film has stirred up the hype it has, and it certainly deserves every success it achieves. The performances from the all star cast are brilliant. Christian Bale's depiction of Dr. Michael Burry is very convincing and Steve Carell and his team including Hamish Linklater, Jeremy Strong and Rafe Spall add some real guts to the story. Ryan Gosling glues the story together brilliantly as narrator and John Magaro, Fin Wittrock and Brad Pitt give the story that important down to earth feel that gives the audience their way in to the story as it were. The names have been changed but everyone depicted is real and what happens in the film happened in real life, unless otherwise stated, which it is on a couple of ingenious occasions. It is often hard to judge what is more effective; a thorough documentary or a dramatic reconstruction. Documentaries can be informative but also quite boring depending on the subject and dramatic reconstructions can be inaccurate and misleading. The Big Short is the best of both worlds, informative, dramatic but most importantly, on point. A fantastic achievement.