The Big Short (2015) User Reviews

"The Big Short" is educational, relevant and entertaining.

[texshelters · 9/10 · 28 December 2015]

Nothing Small about "The Big Short"

"The Big Short" is based on the book with the same name by financial journalist Michael Lewis. It is about collateralized debt obligations, subprime mortgages, credit default swaps and bundling. A snoozer right? Not one bit. "The Big Short" is more entertaining than most films in the cineplex this holiday season. Even if you don't know much about the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007-08, you will recognize a quality film and want to know more about the world economic collapse when the film is over.

The film uses a multitude of techniques to tell the story. There are fourth-wall breaking monologues, a model in a bubble bath explaining economics as well as a singing idol and a celebrity chef using metaphors of cooking and gambling to explain the economic crisis. There are jump cuts, slow motion, foreshadowing and flash backs. The filmmakers use any and all tricks to explain a complicated mess of financial chicanery in order to help the audience understand. The banks, mortgage brokers, the credit ratings agencies and the government manipulated people in the nation and world into investing in worthless packages of bonds, and it behooves the director and writer, Adam McKay, to use all cinematic tricks to explain and untangle the financial corruption. The miracle is that the film deciphers the economic melt-down well while entertaining its audience.

The acting is stellar from the stars to the bit players. They aren't just playing a role, they embody characters during a remarkable time in history. My mother thinks Steve Carrell was the best actor in the film, for she did not even recognize him at first. He plays against character and she liked that. However, my mother had never seen Carrell in "The Office." His character, Mark Baum, is much like the boss from that television series. However, in "The Big Short", he plays it straight. He is a boss of a fund under the umbrella of Morgan Stanley (but it's not Morgan Stanley, and his team likes to point out), and he is on a mission to bring down banks, to show them up, and to prove he's been right about the financial warning signs. He is betting against the hand that feeds him, Morgan Stanley.

I preferred Christian Bale's performance as Michael Burry, an unselfconscious, manic math genius. I haven't seen that frightening look in Bale's eyes since "American Psycho", but this time he's only killing the mortgage backed securities market. Meanwhile, Brad Pitt, under- playing another disaffected former banker, Brad Rickert, helps two friends make millions while they bet against terrible investments, or "play short" the mortgage market. His backstory is revealed steadily and in a way that makes us wonder why he briefly got back into the investment "game." Even Ryan Gosling makes his mark in this star-studded cast playing the prescient "Jared Vennett." Remember, all the characters in the film are based on real people. And that is what makes it so remarkable.

The other major players in the film are Bear Stearns, Morgan Stanley, and a slew of investment houses who at best ignore the coming financial crisis or at worst, colluded in its creation. From the realtors selling the mortgages, to the banks loaning at subprime, to the banks bundling the worthless packages, they were all making too much money to want to stop. This is exactly the kind of over-exuberance that occurred in the 1920s stock market crash, but few payed attention then or in 2007.

"The Big Short" is a dramatized film of true events. And to make sure we understand, the actors break the fourth wall several times to tell us what part is true to the detail and what part is fictionalized to make it more dramatic. But if you are still incredulous, read the book. The events are all sadly true, and we are still paying for it.

Rating: Pay full price (but you might want to see it twice.)

It will take at least two viewings to catch half of what is embedded in this film. This film is entertaining, educational and relevant.

Peace, Tex Shelters

I'm not smart enough to fully understand it.

[cricketbat · 7/10 · 26 December 2018]

I appreciate that The Big Short tries to dumb down the housing crisis of 2008, but, apparently, I'm still not smart enough to fully understand it. A lot of this movie went over my head, but I grasped the generalities and it kept me entertained, so I applaud it for that. This film also featured some great performances by the cast, who lose themselves in their respective roles. This movie is a downer, but it's an educational downer.

Betting against corruption

[TheLittleSongbird · 8/10 · 17 September 2018]

'The Big Short' fascinated me into seeing it without hesitation, had always wanted to see it but it took me a while to get a chance to do so. Have a lot of respect for any film that takes on complex serious subjects that absolutely should be portrayed and the talented cast. While the awards attention (particularly for the script) and critical acclaim (almost universal) interested me further. Plus it looked good.

Good 'The Big Short' indeed was. Very good in fact and while it was not quite perfect it is deserving of the acclaim it got and still gets. Not quite one of the best films of the year for me but very close, with the good things being many and being exceptional in quality. 'The Big Short' took on a subject that needed to be told and holds relevance today and found myself admiring how it approached it while also making something of very high quality as an overall film.

Structurally, 'The Big Short' can get a little complicated and not always easy to follow. Never incoherent as such, just sometimes not always as clear as it could have been.

It definitely would have benefitted from doing less than it did, perhaps not having as much going on and having less characters.

However, 'The Big Short' is well-made with mostly slick photography, despite the odd shakiness that distracts a little, and a fine eye for detail. Furthermore it is smartly directed, keeping things involving throughout the over two hour length, paced in a way that it doesn't feel that long and one is not feeling the seconds.

All the cast are terrific and embody their characters instead of just playing them. Christian Bale's confident quirky performance rightly garnered him an Oscar nomination and Ryan Gosling has one of the film's more challenging roles and essential to anchoring it and he is suitably despicable, not a side we see much from him and it was both interesting and slightly unsettling to watch. Steve Carrell plays it straight while still adopting a jokiness that doesn't feel out of place, he is fun to watch while showing an anger and torment that makes him moving. Brad Pitt does well too and the cameos don't jar or bog things down.

The script is one of the reasons why 'The Big Short' works as well as it does and deserved its Oscar win. It does a great job entertaining and informing and doing it in a way that's taut, smart and making one feel the right emotions. Even though there are issues with the structure, the story is still incredibly compelling, with the interconnecting subplots being involving and developing the compellingly real characters well, and have a lot of admiration for its handling of the subject. It's a very serious, brave subject and not an easy one to bring to film but a subject that's a relevant and important one to tell, 'The Big Short' does remarkably in this aspect. It's always engaging, and it is also funny and informative while also making me feel shocked, angry and emotional as the events unfolded.

Overall, very good with many wonderful things. 8/10 Bethany Cox

Everyone hates poetry

[bementar · 10/10 · 7 August 2016]

Great drama moves you. It excites you. Scares you. Makes you sing. Makes you cry.

The Big Short makes you shake your fist. The Big Short is driven as much by its Iago as it is its Othello, and deservedly so.

The events in the story did happen. Many people still don't care. The Big Short gives you reason to care. That is what separates this film from being merely a documentary and turns it into high drama.

No matter your politics - mark this, like Citizen Kane, as a movie that should be seen at least once. It is not always comfortable to watch. And that is a good thing - The Big Short is a documentary of a real life horror that unfolds in slow motion, and reminds us that even after the fact - no one is listening. Because truth is like poetry.

Two-Sided Look at a Great Film

[A_Different_Drummer · 9/10 · 24 December 2015]

First for newbies, the events here took place prior to the Kevin Spacey film Margin Call (2011). So the Spacey film would have depicted events near the end of this film. Both are superb movies.

Back to the review. This film is very unusual in that the producers have shown fierce determination in taking a serious topic and making it as user friendly as one possibly can. Multiple techniques are used to this end and they all work well. In fact in places the film has a Monty Python quality. Why was this done? One can only assume that the producers understood the multiple studies showing that the modern city-dweller becomes uncomfortable when confronted with any facts which suggest that he or she was not paying attention when bad things were happening. After all we live in a democracy so the voters should have been more alert? Isn't that their job? The techniques mentioned attempt to appeal to our SESAME STREET side and make the whole thing as pleasant an educational experience as possible. But make no mistake, this is an educational movie.

One that should be mandatory for adults. Like getting a driving test before a license. How about learning about Wall Street and the banks before you invest with them...? Carell steals the film and may finally get the attention he deserves. Great actor.

Finally the message. The film suggests not only that Wall Street is corrupt but that the corruption extends to the agencies mandated to supervise Wall Street and (possibly) to Washington itself. The implicit message, conveyed in the end credits, that unless we deal with the problem at the source the symptoms will keep happening over and over and over.

Duh!

((Designated "IMDb Top Reviewer." Please check out my list "167+ Nearly-Perfect Movies (with the occasional Anime or TV miniseries) you can/should see again and again (1932 to the present))

An unexpected and necessary masterpiece

[Zuranthium · 10/10 · 15 November 2015]

Comedy is tragedy + time, right? We're now over 7 years out from the apex of the American financial crisis, which spiraled outward across the world, and yet what has really changed? People are still making millions/billions off the suffering of others, corporate control reigns supreme, fraud is common and remains largely unknown, wealth continues to be ever more concentrated in the grasp of a few, and the remainder of the populace are treated as proverbial rats and made to feel uncouth should they question the system and question not wanting to live their lives playing this sadistic game. Taking 2 pennies and selling them to someone for a hundred dollars remains a legal activity, just call those pennies by a different name and suddenly it's okay to pass them off as fair market.

It doesn't sound funny at all, but The Big Short succeeds in turning this demented and corrupt circus into something improbably hilarious and probing. The power of comedy is its ability to let us see something from a different viewpoint, allow us to process it in ways we wouldn't have been able to otherwise. As we might laugh at children for the hilariously unaware things they say and do, so too will humankind in the future hopefully laugh at how completely pathetic and ignorant our present society has been. Martin Scorsese opened the flap up into the circus entrance with "The Wolf of Wall Street" and, while making good points, was perhaps a bit too concerned with his own technique and had a bit too much indulgence, reveling in the frivolity of it all. The Big Short completely blows the top of the circus and dissects it in every way, starting with the widespread fraud and greed in business, and then examining how it has seeped into our entire existences. Even the good guys here are ultimately out there to make money, lots of it. Isn't that what society tells us we must to do, in order to be valuable? It's sick.

McKay's approach here is "throw everything in, including the kitchen sink" and that creates an energetic, brilliantly matched representation of the subject matter. This does not mean he is lacking control, however. The story being told includes so many facets and characters that it easily could have fallen into disarray, but McKay makes every single character memorable and illuminates every piece of jargon that could be confusing from the outset. It's a huge accomplishment and a far more important one than might seem apparent. The things that were allowed to happen in the realms of business, finance, and banking are absolutely INSANE and unbelievable. It has to be largely comedic because there's no other way of delivering this vast amount of information and complete failure of our entire society and make it all snap into place so continuously, without being ripped apart by the overwhelming darkness of it all. This isn't simply circumstantial and theoretical and mysterious to a degree, as in Oliver Stone's "JFK", but the cold hard truth.

It's not enough to even ask for the truth anymore and ask for answers, we need to question the entire system, a whole web of poisonous bonds that have tightly wound themselves so entirely around us. The work of the film itself is allowing us to project our thoughts, our fears, our anger, and our confusions into this convoluted conundrum. All while being told the truth, so that we at least have a place to even start down the correct path of understanding. It's acting as our own investigative journey in a time when actual news and journalism has become a tiny spec of its former self. We now have more information than ever available to us, yet it's often so shrouded and twisted as to become unrecognizable. There are still those who fear education for what it would do to their own position in life, how it would challenge their own reality. We are still held under the thumb of "greed is good", "thinking you're inherently better is good", "vanity is good".

The shiny mainstream hallmarks of a typical Hollywoood commercial product - the agreeable lighting and manicured actors and tidy locations - are so perfectly representative in this film of the emptiness within the characters and indeed in our entire society. After all the progress we think we've made towards world peace and human rights and medical advances and the stability of the human race, have we lost sight of what a fulfilling life and a world of justice should really be? Aren't we still captive to the same pointless rituals and superficialities, doesn't a veritable monarch and royal court still control most everything? We are now living our lives working for something that can be wiped out with the stroke of a keyboard. We are told something of monetary worth that is non-existent, for all intents and purposes, is something we should strive for. Making a bet on the outcome of another bet is a whole industry. The non-existent and ridiculous and pointless directly hurts the lives of many.

The Big Short is one of the most important films of this era and one of the best. I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. It is an illumination, a magical pairing of a director's sensibility to exactly the correct form that most fully allows it to blossom and hold water. It is water which the film warns us will be the next basic human necessity to be denied by those few who hold power.

Smart Greed

[JackCerf · 8/10 · 28 December 2015]

Harry Knowles once wrote a review of Das Boot that said the movie was so well made that you'd find yourself rooting for Nazi sailors trying to sink American ships. So here. You find yourself rooting for clever "outsiders and weirdos," as one of them puts it, who saw what nobody else wanted to see -- that an immense structure of mortgage based securities was doomed to collapse because it rested on the backs of subprime borrowers who couldn't support the weight and should never have been loaned the money. We have been taught by generations of fiction to identify with characters who are outsiders and rebels. Because these guys are smart, because they are antisocial and because they were laughed at by smug fools who believed the conventional wisdom, you identify with them, and you wait anxiously for their vindication. Then you realize that their vindication means the collapse of the American economy. They were the guys on the Titanic who knew what the iceberg meant and booked reserved seats in the lifeboats.

Michael Lewis, from whose book the movie was adapted, got his training at Salomon Brothers in the mid-80s, as mortgage based securities were being invented. (There's an early shout-out to Lew Ranieri, the Salomon trader who invented them.) As anyone knows who's read Lewis's memoir of those days, Liar's Poker, the culture at Salomon was that your job was to be smarter than everybody else in the bond market, understand values better, and know what other traders were going to do before they knew it themselves. If you were smart enough, you deserved whatever you took away from somebody less smart on the other side of the trade. That's why Lewis admires his protagonists and that, despite a thick coating of moral outrage, is the heart of the movie. The guys who shorted the housing market weren't any more virtuous or less greedy than the great majority of complacent, conventionally minded bankers who believed that the trees would keep growing all the way up to the sky. They just saw more clearly and had plenty of nerve and faith in their own judgment. If they had been wrong, as shorts often are, they and their clients would have been wiped out. When they turned out right, they took the money and kept it, even if some of them felt guilty about it.

I know somewhat about this area, having litigated some of the aftermath. The celebrity cameo explanations of subprime debt, collateralized debt obligations, and synthetic CDOs are not only simple but accurate -- the two involving Anthony Bourdain and Selena Gomez are downright elegant. The key concept of the credit default swap comes out nicely through the dialogue -- a chance to buy fire insurance on the house down the street just before it catches fire. There are a couple of more points that could have used the same thing, especially when people start talking about "FICO scores." It could also have been a little more clear that the eventual collapse was delayed because the smarter investment banks like Goldman finally woke up, saw it coming, unloaded their CDO inventory on investors who were still asleep, and cut their losses by buying swaps themselves. But this is a smart, entertaining telling of an outrageous true story. It deserves all the praise it has gotten, and maybe an Oscar for best adapted screenplay. If it teaches people without a financial background a little of what went on, it will be more than a momentary entertainment. But it will certainly entertain.

People Always Pay Their Mortgages

[bkoganbing · 7/10 · 16 March 2016]

The Big Short is a good if not entirely successful attempt to explain the economic collapse of the housing market. Banks lend money to people for mortgages, issue bonds based on the money that gets paid like clock work from hard working people who pay their mortgages to own their own home. I remember in the late 80s my mom paid off the final installment on a house my parents bought in 1955.

But my parents weren't deadbeats and banks started getting looser and looser with easy credit. They began issuing what was called sub prime loans which is below the interest market rate. Those did go more and more to deadbeats and there's one great scene where a well proportioned woman tells us exactly what sub prime is and to run whenever you hear the words mentioned.

Several people in the brokerage and the banking businesses got a scent of what was to happen to the various brokerage houses and the investment portfolios that had those bonds. People lost billions and that is no exaggeration. Like in the Stock Market crash of 1929 people saw that coming and sold out as well. A few got rich and even richer like Joseph P. Kennedy then. Most went bust.

Some of the people who got the bad odor from the banks were people played by folks like Christian Bale, Steve Carrell, Ryan Gosling, John Magaro, Finn Wittrock, and Brad Pitt who was in the investing game and has an interesting role as one who is now living a modified hippie lifestyle. Magaro and Wittrock have their own small brokerage firm and Pitt gives them some sage advice.

I liked Carrell the best because he has the best scenes in the film, when he personally investigates who some of those mortgages have been issued to. His scene with the stripper is priceless.

It might help to have a business background, but The Big Short breaks it down for you as simply as possible. I might not have understood all the nuances, but I was entertained.

The rich get rich and the poor get evicted. Ain't we got Fun

[tkn10015 · 9/10 · 14 November 2015]

Don't know how Adam McKay made deplorable humans, blinding fear, gut-boiling outrage and gleeful shaming so much fun to watch. He brought along his bag o' laffs but planted them in such rich soil so we had to hack our way through the thick underbrush of tainted greenbacks and marked decks.

Everyone's in top form. Didn't recognize Brad Pitt for awhile. Ryan Gosling funniest. Christian Bale let us feel his pain and lonely genius. Steve Carell dug deep and came up with a real mensch.

Nice to see Marisa Tomei, Hamish Linklater, John Magaro, Rafe Spall, Finn Wittrock, Max Greenfield and talented others working at a solid level.

I walked out of the Westwood Bruin Theater in awe and mad as hell.

A Great Movie but Also a Complicated one.

[Ahmed_Magdy96 · 7/10 · 14 November 2020]

From the first while you will know that you are about to see greatness, a great acting level, an unbelievable scintific scenario, but at the end you will find that you have passed many lines because you are not supposed to be an economic expert or smart analyst to understand all that bit of knowledge and education, at the end the movie was so complicated to me to understand it all, which is contrasting with the basic idea of the cinematic artform "Movies should facilitate it self"

So Much Greed/So Little Compassion

[Hitchcoc · 9/10 · 24 April 2016]

I have to admit that I don't understand all the intricacies of the bond markets that were being manipulated here. Whether one is a Wall Street maven or not isn't the issue. The fact is that people sold mortgages to others who had no business getting into them. I recall a 60 Minutes report on the bubble before the crash took place. The expert had them drive through a desert area, filled with enormous houses, all of which were in default. If one looked in the windows of these, you could see that some of the tenants had stripped all kinds of fixtures and walked away. There were two types of buyers, it seemed. Those that were trying for the fast buck and those that really had no clue what they were getting into. The balloon mortgages took them from affordable to bankruptcy. This was unsustainable and it wasn't long before the banks found themselves with armloads of houses and buyers with hopeless debt. The guys in the movie are aware, but, for the most part, aren't all that sympathetic to these foibles. They go in to make money and they manage to do it. The whole thing that overrides this entire film is that all the evidence was right there, but the greed of most of the parties supersedes all of that. I thought this was a fine movie with a superb lesson. To the new generation. You may not be entitled to have whatever you want without paying your dues.

Informative and somehow interesting...

[Dr_Sagan · 16 January 2016]

First of all don't be fooled by other reviews. This movie is neither a crap nor a masterpiece.

It has a lot of technical terms and jargon from the world of economics and despite the obvious effort to explain things (including breaking the 4th wall (i.e. talking direct to the audience while looking into the camera), and cameo appearances from movies stars like Margot Robbie and Selina Gomez) you will probably fail to understand in depth the mechanics of what is happening.

The world of banks, funds, bonds, financing and the stock market will remain a mystery for most of the viewers.

Big names of Hollywood star in the Big Short including Brad Pitt, Ryan Gosling, Christian Bale and others. They play real persons, who had an insight on the global economic crisis we probably still experiencing.

As a movie it has its own style. Something of a documentary, a comedy sometimes, but essentially a drama since the crisis cost 8 million people their job and their homes.

People who are impressed easily might tell you this is a "masterpiece". Believe me it isn't. But I recommend to see it. Even better at home where you can pause or rewind the movie to understand better. It is lengthy (130min) but you won't get bored. It needs some patience though especially in the beginning and not to be disappointed when terms like CDO, payouts etc. are starting to emerge.

Respect

[jannikpeveling · 7/10 · 30 July 2021]

I'm very surprised that a movie about a topic I don't understand and I'm not really interested in was explained to me in such a great way and created suspense in over two hours runtime. Very nice and respect to the director, the crew and the (incredible) cast.

Entertaining, but tells only part of the truth

[derektetlow-459-856509 · 5/10 · 10 July 2016]

The Big Short is a very entertaining and enjoyable film to watch. The acting is top notch, it's got some great humor, it's fair share of dramatic sequences, and the characters describing complex financial instruments was both funny and a very creative way to get the point across. For sheer entertainment value I would give it a 9.

However, I'm afraid this film is blatantly guilty of the crime of omission. The obvious tone that was set throughout the picture was that the only reason for the financial meltdown of 2007 was due solely to greed, corporate malfeasance, and outright corruption when it came to the housing market. No doubt all those were indeed factors in the financial crisis, but there were a whole host of other contributors that the film conveniently leaves out.

One of the first things I noticed that was left out of this film was the fact that the US government played a very large role in the 2007 financial meltdown - this was never mentioned anywhere in the movie. There were a few mild references to the SEC (our supposed government financial watchdog) in the film, but you really had to be paying attention to catch it and they were very insignificant. If you didn't know any better, if you'd never done any objective reading on the 2007 financial crisis, and you took this movie purely at face value, you would've thought the huge 2007 mess was all caused by greedy right- wing corporations out to make a buck any way they could. This angle is only partially true.

There were some bad actors in the corporate and financial arena when it came to the housing market, yes, but The Big Short makes it seem like every financial corporation and financial corporate employee was out to screw your average American who just wanted to own a home - it's just simply not true!

Not to give a massive financial history lesson here, but the government contributed in the following ways to the 2007 crash: 1) cheap money, 2) very low interest rates for too long, 3) the Community Reinvestment Act (forced banks to lower their lending standards, especially to minorities and poor Americans), 4) promoting quasi-government agencies such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (they loaded up on sub-prime mortgages), 5) very bad fiscal policy, and 6) loosening of the lending standards for mortgages. Each one of these aforementioned factors is complicated and not easy to explain, yet The Big Short never mentions ANY of these ANYWHERE in the film.

Another thing that was bothersome is that this film attempts to portray the borrowers of these sub-prime loans as just poor suckers who got taken advantage of at the hands of everyone from the banks all the way down to the greedy real estate agents. There is one scene where an exotic dancer admits she owns five houses and a condo all financed with sub-prime mortgages. I'm sorry, but to make it look like these people had guns held to their heads to take out these loans and that they weren't taking advantage of the real estate boom themselves is disingenuous at best.

If you want to watch a good movie for two hours of entertainment, then I think you will enjoy The Big Short. But if you're looking for a docu-drama style film that explores all angles of what happened back in 2007, then this movie falls miserably short.

Too big to fail

[Prismark10 · 10/10 · 17 December 2018]

The Big Short is simply an outstanding film. I wanted to go to the top of a cliff and shout that good intelligent films were still being made. The trouble is it is a long drive for me before I can get to a nice cliff.

I remember talking to my business bank manager in 2004 and telling him that there were people who were buying houses that had risen in value by over 300% in the last few years. These people were getting mortgages to buy these houses and their wages had not gone up by anything like 300%. The multiples for the wages/mortgage ratio did not add up.

The bank manager who worked for his bank for decades since he left college told me not to worry. There would be no housing crash as they had learned the lesson of the early 1990s when the housing market last overheated. He was right, this time it was different, his bank went bust and had to bailed out. He still would not admit to his bank's stupidity or negligence.

What should be a snoozefest about the financial meltdown of 2007/08 due to bad mortgage lending is made exhilarating and informative because the filmmakers use celebrities to coherently explain the financial concepts at the centre of this film.

The star studded cast includes three Oscar winners. Dr Michael Burry (Christian Bale) is a hedge fund manager at Scion Capital. A qualified doctor who likes to drum to loud music, he doesn't like wearing shoes, is socially awkward and he has a glass eye. Burry discovers that the housing mortgage market is riddled with bad loans and bets against it. His action scares his own investors.

Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling) is the narrator of this film. He admits he is not altruistic, he did it for the money. He is an investment banker who learned of Burry's bet against the housing market. Vennett also thinks that the subprime mortgage market is vulnerable.

Vennett also wants to bet against the market and persuades Mark Baum (Steve Carell) another socially awkward investor with a strong moral ethic. Baum and his team travel around to see if there is any truth that the subprime mortgage market could fail. They talk to mortgage brokers, people who have taken out loans, people who work in the ratings agencies, dealers that slice and dice the risky bonds full of bad debt. Baum is appalled with what he finds out.

Charlie Geller and Jamie Shipley are two small time investors trying to break into the big time who stumble on Vennett's proposals. They too think that Vennett's ideas have substance. However as they are small league they need the help of their neighbour Ben Rickert (Brad Pitt) a retired investment bankers for the big banks. Rickert felt the whole financial system was wrong and heading for a fall.

You can view these guys as mavericks, weirdos or even losers. Once they bet against the mortgage market they have a vested interest. They need the banks to fail or else they will lose money.

What they find is that whole system was run by people who had no clue what they were doing, the market was rigged, worse corrupt and they would likely to be bailed out at the end. While the going was good they earned money in commissions and there was plenty of that flowing.

The Big Short was directed and co-written by Adam McKay who is better known comedies. McKay won an Oscar for Best Screenplay. He just about contains his anger as to what happened and the price ordinary people paid after the collapse. He lets his film do the talking and there is no need for him to do a polemic. McKay adds comedy to an already intelligent film.

It almost has you rooting for the U.S. economy to fail!

[Hellmant · 9/10 · 5 January 2016]

'THE BIG SHORT': Four and a Half Stars (Out of Five)

Critically acclaimed comedy-drama flick; about the financial crisis, of 2007 to 2010, and the clever businessmen who were able to profit from it. The film was directed by Adam McKay (who's helmed such other comedy classics as 'ANCHORMAN', 'STEP BROTHERS' and 'THE OTHER GUYS'), and it was written by McKay and Charles Randolph. The movie stars Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, John Magaro, Finn Wittrock, Jeremy Strong, Hamish Linklater, Rafe Spall and Brad Pitt. Along with it being impressively critically rated, the film is also expected to be nominated for multiple Academy Awards (including Best Picture). I found it to be a very insightful, and highly entertaining, movie.

The story begins in 2005, when Michael Burry (Bale), a socially awkward hedge fund manager, predicts the upcoming financial crisis (due to the unstable housing market) and decides to bet against it. Burry creates a 'credit default swap market', much to the dismay of many of his investors. Multiple other businessmen catch wind of Burry's plan, and decide to pursue similar financial ventures. They include trader Jared Vennett (Gosling), hedge fund manager Mark Baum (Carell) and retired banker Ben Rickert (Pitt). The true story follows three different groups of people; as they follow their American dream, of becoming rich (while everyone else's dreams collapse).

The movie is very informative, about what caused the economy to fail (in 2007). It's also very detailed, and educational (in it's explanations), while trying to remain entertaining; at the same time. I still got lost, multiple times, but I also learned a lot too. Besides being politically fascinating, the movie is hilarious, and full of complex characters. It's a lot more insightful, than anything McKay has done before. What's really odd about the film, is that it almost has you rooting for the U.S. economy to fail; just to prove it's likable characters right (I especially like Bale's character, Michael Burry). The film is a must see!

Watch our movie review show 'MOVIE TALK' at: https://youtu.be/dWmLQGusjEk

One of 2015's best films

[RossRivero99 · 9/10 · 23 February 2017]

Adam McKay's "The Big Short" is the best financial movie I have seen since watching Oliver Stone's "Wall Street" (1987), but the only difference between these two movies is that this movie was based on true events. The film takes place before and during the recession of 2008 in which some aspects of this movie are pretty funny if you ask me. The movie was adapted from the book by Michael Lewis and it basically starts off with Dr. Michael J. Burry (Christian Bale) who was the first person to predict the housing market crash by actually betting against the housing market before it actually happened despite everyone else thinking that he was a crazy person. Then 20 minutes into the film we see a banker named Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling) talk to a Morgan Stanley employee named Mark Baum (Steve Carell) and his coworkers and Vennett tells them that not long from now the economy is going to collapse and that nobody was even talking about it. also during the movie and in between all of the financial conversations Baum is going through a personal tragedy that I will not reveal in this review for those people that haven't seen the movie, and Baum is getting comforted between phone calls and at home by his wife (Marisa Tomei). The screenplay for this movie by McKay along with Charles Randolph took home the Oscar last year for best adapted screenplay and I had a few minor gripes with it here and there but then again it was directed by a man who normally does comedies. Then later in this movie we see 2 other men in the finance world (John Magaro and Finn Wittrock) end contacting a retired trader by the name of Ben Rickert (Brad Pitt) who is the fourth person to predict the collapse of the housing market. the only major problem I had with this movie was the shaky camera angles which could have been improved on, and also I think that Adam McKay could have been more impartial instead of openly mocking the corporations but then again that is just my opinion, but otherwise the performances from Bale (who got an Oscar nomination), Gosling, Carell, and Pitt are top notch, as well as Marisa Tomei's. This is one of last year's greatest achievements in film, and I stand by this review.

Good...but best to be watched with an economics professor.

[planktonrules · 8/10 · 21 September 2016]

"The Big Short" is a good film but also a film that would be tough for the average viewer to enjoy and understand. This is because although the housing bubble's burst was a mess and destroyed a lot of peoples' lives, few folks really understand it. Sure, folks know that the banks were foolish as were home buyers (since they couldn't possibly afford these homes)....but that's about as far as their understanding goes. And, with the film tossing around all sorts of insider jargon, it's sure to confuse more than entertain.

What I would LOVE to see is a pop-up video version of the film with explanatory text appearing on the screen throughout the movie to further clarify what is happening. I've seen several Japanese import films like this--and they helped to explain cultural references that most non-Japanese viewers would miss.

The bottom line is that I am extremely well educated compared to the average person and yet I sometimes felt a bit lost. Enjoyable but best watched with an economics professor sitting in the room to explain it all in detail.

A Creative Work of Art

[Michael_Elliott · 30 January 2016]

The Big Short (2015)

**** (out of 4)

Four different groups of people notice that something isn't quite right with the housing market and soon make a large wager that the economy is going to fall apart.

Trying to sell America on a film that deals with a true story of the market collapse isn't the easiest thing to do and I must admit that I was shocked when THE BIG SHORT became a modest hit at the box office. I was even more shocked when I realized Adam McKay was the director behind this film but I was even more shocked at how wonderful he handled the material once the end credits started to roll. I mean, who thought that McKay would handle such a tricky story just like you'd expect Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese and Robert Altman?

I purposely used those three filmmakers to make my point. The Hitchcock connection comes from that director liking to let you know you're in danger and then he milks the suspense. THe same is done here as you know going into the movie that millions of Americans are going to lose their homes and their jobs so McKay lights the bomb at the start of the film and THE BIG SHORT just grows with tension leading up to the final collapse. The Altman connection is how McKay uses four different groups of people acting during the same period to build up to the conclusion. All four stories are all very interesting on their own and the director perfectly mixes them together and plays them well off of each other.

As for the Scorsese connection, there's a whole lot of creative style on display here and just look at the wonderful cinematography that pretty much throws you into the middle of these meetings and you almost feel as if you're listening and watching something that you're not supposed to be. The style also really shows off the various lifestyles and the wild nature of Wall Street. Scorsese had tackled the excess in THE WOLF OF WALL STREET, which would make a perfect double feature with this film. The score, the music selections and the dialogue just jump off the screen and perfectly create a world that most watching the film probably won't be a part of.

Of course, then there are the wonderful performances that bring these characters, the situations and the dialogue to life. Christian Bale, is there anything this guy can't do? He plays another weirdo here but is there anyone who does it better or more believable? Steve Carell plays perhaps the most troubled character here and the actor turns in the greatest performance of his career. Ryan Gosling's dry humor is perfect for the black comedy in the film and Brad Pitt is also extremely good even though he plays the most laid back character. Throw in Marisa Tomei, Melissa Leo, Rafe Spall, John Magaro and Finn Wittrock and you've got some of the best acting that you're going to see all year.

THE BIG SHORT left me a tad bit nervous the first ten minutes because I wasn't quite sure if it was going to be able to grab me and hold my attention throughout. After all, it's story is a confusing one that you have to keep up with but McKay does a marvelous job at using humor to get the more confusing parts across and it works perfectly. This is certainly a very intelligent film that gets its message across without having to scarifies the entertainment level. It's certainly a creative gem that actually works.

Oh the irony

[okky-1 · 7/10 · 14 January 2016]

I enjoyed this movie even if it made me feel somewhat uneasy. Any film,doc or book that explains how the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) occurred I tend to be interested in.

My main issue with the movie is that it portrays that main protagonists as heroes but the reality is they profited from the collapse of the financial system and all the pain it subsequently caused. The irony is that the credit default swaps (CDS) that they purchased (essentially going short on the collateralised debt obligations (CDOs)) were a main cause of the collapse of some of the big financial institutions. By purchasing CDS s they were essentially betting that the mortgage instruments (CDOs) would fail . Of course once the big banks got wind of what was going on and began to realise how bad these sub prime mortgage instruments were they started furiously buying the very same credit default swaps.Subsequently once the CFC occurred large institutions such as Lehman Brothers failed as they couldn't make good on all the credit default swaps they had sold.

I feel the movie glossed over this aspect so its main characters came out looking like they took on the big banks for the little man. This was never the case. They did it for their own benefit pure and simple and this money stayed in their own pockets along with their investors.

Apart from this it was well acted, good story line if somewhat slow in parts. A solid 7 out of 10

A delightful merging of information and comedy

[StevePulaski · 8/10 · 29 December 2015]

No subject in the world is inherently interesting or uninteresting, for it's always about the communicative method or channel used to promote or inform one about the subject that is either interesting or not. Having said that, some subjects are more alienating than others, and one of those subjects is economics/finance, largely because of its dependency upon a plethora of terminology and jargon that usually cannot be adequately defined without including other terminology or jargon. Before you know it, searching the definition of something like a "Roth IRA" leads you to Google searches about embezzlement and quantitative easing in efforts to try and circumvent and define what you were originally looking for.

Thankfully, Adam McKay's The Big Short assumes the audience is fairly stupid and blissfully ignorant when it comes to the interworkings of what led to the global economic crisis of 2007-2008, which saw record unemployment and catastrophic results for the usually reliable housing market. In true movie fashion, we observe the financial crash, not from an insider standpoint, where sure-fire, grade-A trades and exchanges are being made, but by a plethora of quirky outsiders trying to run away from a boulder that keeps gaining on them until it flattens them and everyone in their tracks. The only ones saved are the ones who didn't manage to fall or stumble when pushing said boulder down the hill in the first place.

We initially meet a quirky hedge fund manager named Michael Burry (Christian Bale), who discovers that the U.S. housing market is based on a series of subprime loans (which, we are told by Margot Robbie as she soaks in a bubblebath whilst sipping champagne, may as well be synonymous with "s***") and is inevitably going to collapse sometime in the second quarter of 2007. Being that the housing market is often viewed as the safest bet in America, Michael begins to go around to different banks to bet against the stability and long-term security of the housing market in efforts to profit from the impending disaster.

Then there's Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling), a fairly small-time investor, who winds up putting in his own money to bet against the housing market, along with Mark Baum (Steve Carell), a cynical and depressed banker of many years. The two wind up discovering that the market collapse is further aided by the solicitation of collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), basically collections of the aforementioned subprime loans that come packaged together and market as competent and reliable investments.

Finally, there's Charlie Geller (John Magaro) and Jamie Shipley (Finn Wittrock), two young-bloods anxious to break into the financial market. The inexperienced duo enlist in the help of a retired, conservative banker named Ben Rickert (Brad Pitt), who helps them make decisions with their money. Unlike the other more experienced men, both Charlie and Jamie lack the kind of gusto and namesake that allows them into the offices of big name bankers. As a result, they pine for a bigger piece of the pie in a smaller way, largely by lounging in their parents' basements, hunched over their iPads.

The Big Short functions as a competent, satirical anthology that breaks down the financial crisis - that is now nearly a decade old, if you can believe that - enough to be informative and entertaining. Considering this is from Adam McKay, a frequent collaborator with Will Ferrell and Funny or Die, responsible for films like Casa De Mi Padre, The Other Guys, and Step Brothers, this is a huge step in the right direction for him as a name in comedy and satire. Rather than focusing on a bargain-barrel Spanish telenovela satire or a tired, mean-spirited comedy based around who can yell the loudest, McKay sets his sights on peddling information through the most communicable form - entertainment. If you can succeed in meriting consistent laughs while teaching an audience something, you have profoundly succeeded at two things many have a difficult time accomplishing in a separate sense. That alone is worth considerable praise.

While the screenplay by McKay and Charles Randolph is undoubtedly a big part at why this film succeeds, The Big Short is a true testament to brilliant comedic acting on various cylinders, as well. The men of the hour, specifically, are both Bale and Carell, seriously taking on opposite personas that they pull off to a tee. Bale plays confused and downright quirky with just the right amount of edge to make him believable rather than hopelessly incompetent or downright silly, and Carell's sporadic bouts of rage and lack of self-awareness make him all the more watchable screen presence. Other performances, like Gosling's, who serves as the infrequent, anti-hero narrator, is notable for its brash charm, in addition to Pitt, who works largely because he's even more understated and harder to define than in his latest film By the Sea.

The Big Short has a lot of comedic value, but it's nonetheless a frightening depiction of where America is currently at; a depressing oligarchy, controlled and manipulated by those with money at the mercy of those without. We've seen "The Great Recession of 2007," as it's sometimes called, plunge numerous working class and poor families into further states of hopelessness, while those who helped cause and further the effects of the recession have gone on to have a road of many ups and few downs since then. McKay's eye, ear, and talent for conducting satire in a way that's simultaneously uproariously funny, in addition to having the ability to be truly upsetting, is quite marvelous and unexpected, and one can only hope that with proper recognition and compensation for his efforts on this film, he furthers down this path rather than the one he was previously on.

No so good on the rewatch

[tom_maxey · 6/10 · 11 September 2023]

This movie does a great job at taking a big, complicated, and very boring financial plot and making it flashy and easy to understand. The first time watching this movie feels like and experience. Part documentary, part PSA, and part crime drama. Like a lot of classic Scorsese movies, we follow the actions of self serving, villain characters as they unveil their master plan and slowly come to terms with who they are.

However, the characters in this movie are pretty one dimensional caricatures, where the actors were focused more on a physical or behavioral gimmick than portraying the real human emotions involved in this situation. When the plot and informative nature of this movie is stripped away, you're just left with star power phoning it in.

In hindsight we've seen this movie again from Adam McKay in Don't Look Up. A movie that is full of slightly interesting characters that all make up a piece of a bigger jigsaw puzzle. And rewatching this movie is like trying to build a puzzle I've already completed before. It's no fun.

Four "outsider" Wall Street entities capitalize on an impending financial collapse of the US financial system.

[HollywoodGlee · 9/10 · 13 November 2015]

Reviewed by Larry Gleeson. Viewed during the AFI Filmfest 2015.

"The Big Short," directed by Adam McKay, based on the book by Michael Lewis, was adapted by McKay and Charles Randolph and made its world premiere Thursday, November 12, 2015 at the historic TCL Grauman's Chinese Theater as the closing night film for the latest edition of the American Film Institute's AFI FEST film festival.

The film's narrative is driven by four cynical, fringe Wall Street entities disgusted with the large banking institutions' overriding greed for profits. They make the decision to capitalize on the ensuing housing market calamity and the financial meltdown of 2008 upon discovering the market frenzy is being driven by worthless collateral debt obligations.

McKay chooses to inject a significant dose of humor in the early scenes to condition the audience receptors for what they are about to experience. Utilizing the Martin Scorsese docudrama style in a similar setting with "Wolf of Wall Street," a strong narrative voice dominates particular moments. Several of these deliberately break the 'Fourth Wall" in the style of "Wolfie," Jordan Belfort, as the characters, including a hilarious cameo by Selena Gomez, speak directly into the camera to explain the complexities of Wall Street finance. The overall effect adds additional humor and adds another layer in creating a sense of authenticity and truth about the film's subject matter.

After a rather lengthy dizzying, yet delightful, character introduction, the film picks up pace as the drama begins to unfold. Dr. Michael Burry, an eccentric financial analyst, with complete autonomy of an investment fund, uncovers variables in his economic forecast indicating a massive housing market collapse. He informs his higher up, Lawrence Fields, played convincingly by Tracy Letts, of his discovery and creates a financial prospectus. In essence, he creates a commodity of selling short on bundled mortgages.

The bankers laugh as they willingly sell Burry all the "insurance" he wants. Word quickly spreads of Burry's perceived madness in a after-work cocktail scene. With interest piqued upon overhearing the Wall Street gossip of the day, Jarred Bennett, portrayed by Ryan Gosling, scoops up the essence of Burry's move. Soon, he sells a group led by Steve Carell's all-too-human, Mark Baum to buy in.

As the debacle is in full free-fall, Baum struggles with disbelief as he and his group have bet against their own umbrella entity, Morgan Stanley. The final team that has uncovered the impending financial crisis, made up of two Wall Street neophytes and veteran Ben Rickert, played by one of the film's producers, Brad Pitt, also struggles with the imploding financial system caused by corporate greed and indifference.

With a mammoth cast, McKay draws on a plethora of talent in the likes of Hollywood A-listers including Brad Pitt, Ryan Gosling, Selena Gomez, Christian Bale, Karen Gillan Steve Carell, Marisa Tomei, Melissa Leo and Finn Wittrock. McKay and Randolph create characters with witty dialogue coupled with complementary cinematography provided by Barry Ackroyd. The soundtrack carries a similar tone of "Wolf of Wall Street," with a compilation of classic rock anthems. Nicholas Britell widely recognized for his work on Steve McQueen's "12 Years a Slave," where Britell composed on set the on-screen violin performances, work songs, dances and spiritual songs rarely misses a beat this time out. Much like another AFI FEST 2015 film, "The Clan," Argentina's official entry to the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences Best Foreign Language Category for Oscar, "The Big Short," musical score is often in juxtaposition to the the narrative and mies-en-scene adding a deeper visceral quality to the viewing experience.

In its most basic essence, "The Big Short," builds on the visceral truth of Scorsese's "Wolf of Wall Street." It depicts a not-so-long-ago present where a noble ideal, making home ownership a reality for Americans, is bastardized by the indifferent market forces of capitalism. Probably not what Adam Smith had in mind when he penned his treatise, "The Wealth of Nations." Warmly Recommended.

Highly educational distillation of 2007-2008 financial crisis despite non-heroic nature of film's protagonists

[Turfseer · 7/10 · 14 January 2016]

Adam McKay, former head writer for Saturday Night Live, co-wrote and directed this black comedy based on the 2010 book of the same name by Michael Lewis, all about how a few quirky finance guys foresaw the looming financial crisis of 2007-2008, and ended up profiting from it.

The main character played by Christian Bale is Michael Burry, a former physician turned hedge fund manager who discovers that the US housing market is unstable due to risky sub-prime loans. He becomes convinced that the financial crisis is unavoidable and creates a "credit default swap market," convincing various banks to accept his "bets" that the housing market will collapse. The banks, convinced that the market is stable, gladly accept his investments on behalf of the investors in his hedge fund.

We find out a little about Burry's background—that he lost an eye as a child. suffers from Asperger's Syndrome, and was always a maverick who didn't fit the typical profile of a hedge fund manager. McKay establishes a conflict between Burry and his jittery investors, who stand to lose millions, if his prediction does not come to fruition. How Burry copes with the pressure is where the comedy comes in— although it's certainly not laugh out loud funny. And it's also quite interesting how Burry ultimately prevents all his investors from panicking and cashing in all their chips—he does this by creating a moratorium on all withdrawals, right before the big economic collapse!

When trader Jared Vennett of Deustche Bank (Ryan Gosling) hears about Burry's credit default swap market, he decides to get in on the action too. Vennett's wrong number phone call alerts our other protagonist, Mark Baum, another quirky, curmudgeonly hedge fund manager adroitly played by Steve Carrell. Baum and Vennett join forces and Baum begins to investigate the depth of the problem with the US Housing market. Baum is a sensitive guy who was deeply affected by his brother who committed suicide. He discovers that collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) are loan packages bundled together and given AAA ratings by unscrupulous rating agencies. McKay wisely takes us out of the finance board rooms and has his principals attend a big housing forum in Las Vegas where Baum in particular meets a fat cat businessman who has profited greatly by creating synthetic CDOs. Baum ultimately convinces his business associates to adopt Burry's stratagem.

Also in the mix are small-time, young investors Charlie Geller (John Magaro) and Jamie Shipley (Finn Wittrock) who learn of the swap market and then must conscript a retired banker, Ben Rickert (Brad Pitt), to get them in the game. Rickert, now a new age type (and one who has a conscience like Baum), castigates Geller and Shipley for celebrating over impending profits, at the expense of the millions of people who will lose their jobs and income due to the financial collapse. Geller and Shipley try to atone for their selfish attitude by attempting to alert the press about the impending collapse, but to no avail.

McKay may see the protagonists here as heroes merely for their foresight into what is to come, and for bearing witness to the fraud they uncovered. Nonetheless, despite their guilty conscience, they ended up profiting from other peoples' misery. Despite their foresight, they're really nothing more than vultures feeding on the carcasses of the millions wiped out in the financial downturn. But it's really the entire financial industry as well as the US government whom McKay is indicting here—a corrupt system that allowed swindlers to convince low-income people to live beyond their means and obtain mortgages that they couldn't possibly pay off.

In the end it's the film's educational value that makes it worthwhile. The 2007-2008 financial collapse is a topic that is difficult to understand. McKay has his characters explain the financial jargon and even brings in celebrities such as Selena Gomez to explain arcane terms that pop up in the narrative. While some of the characters' machinations become somewhat repetitious, I still was able to learn quite a bit about a topic that isn't ordinarily so easy to grasp.

convoluted

[HEFILM · 5/10 · 10 January 2016]

Famous writer director, Bill Wilder said if you are telling a complicated story you have to tell it in a simple way. He was right. This film wants to be funny and savvy and meaningful those are all great goals but it doesn't really achieve them. The story telling is as spastic as the camera-work is jerky, and the more it tries to make the back room dealings of corrupt banks make sense the less it does.

Another key thing is that our main characters goals are to profit from the impending doom of the economy and though a few moments are supposed to make us care about them we really don't. They still come off as amoral socially odd business men out to make bank so why do we care? We don't.

The attempts at hip comedy fail and are distracting--characters suddenly talking to the camera--directly to the audience, celebrity cameos trying to explain what's going on. These are just distractions. I guess they wanted an almost Michael Moore type vibe but in a more fictional type presentation. It's especially frantic on the big screen almost headache inducing during some of the 20 sec flash cut montage scenes that keep popping up.

It's great the director wanted to go for a "real" movie, that he doesn't succeed is too bad. A for effort as they say does not mean he gets an A.