Margin Call could have been far better, but wasn't.
The over-numerous leading characters – perhaps inevitable with so many big names involved – crowd each other out, and we get to know none adequately. That might work in a jokey 70s blockbuster, but not in a 2010s production about the financial meltdown.
Several intended to prompt sympathy – Kevin Spacey as the old salt Sam Rogers, conceivably the rookie 20somethings Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto) and Seth Bregman (Penn Badgley) – frankly do not; in a world of hundreds of millions ruined financially ruined by these people, who worries for the relatively herbivorous but complicit, even if marriages have failed and pets have died? It's only the sacked (and thus rarely seen) risk management chief Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci) who rates as remotely near-likable, and if he had not been sacked... you know the rest.
Partly because of the thinly painted characters, partly because of the sparse office surroundings and limited score, there's little tension. Through-the-night meetings are called, but the dialogue taking place in them and in their water cooler breaks is too long-winded and/or self-pitying to maintain interest. There's an ambitiously lengthy build up to the rapacious dumping of worthless stock on unsuspecting clients, yet when the actual crime arrives, it's a half-baked let-down.
Margin Call appears a something-must-be-done response to financial calamity. By contrast the original Wall Street, with just two genuinely filled out characters and made during top-of-bubble markets, executed its drama – ingénu gulled by middle aged monster while dealing screens flicker - unforgettably. The way is open for a genuine blockbuster on the banking mess, and in fashioning it the makers should pare the A-list stars, reject technical jargonising and hammer relentlessly on the human tragedy – that of ruined average Joe, less of the perpetrators, jarred but still affluent.
The over-numerous leading characters – perhaps inevitable with so many big names involved – crowd each other out, and we get to know none adequately. That might work in a jokey 70s blockbuster, but not in a 2010s production about the financial meltdown.
Several intended to prompt sympathy – Kevin Spacey as the old salt Sam Rogers, conceivably the rookie 20somethings Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto) and Seth Bregman (Penn Badgley) – frankly do not; in a world of hundreds of millions ruined financially ruined by these people, who worries for the relatively herbivorous but complicit, even if marriages have failed and pets have died? It's only the sacked (and thus rarely seen) risk management chief Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci) who rates as remotely near-likable, and if he had not been sacked... you know the rest.
Partly because of the thinly painted characters, partly because of the sparse office surroundings and limited score, there's little tension. Through-the-night meetings are called, but the dialogue taking place in them and in their water cooler breaks is too long-winded and/or self-pitying to maintain interest. There's an ambitiously lengthy build up to the rapacious dumping of worthless stock on unsuspecting clients, yet when the actual crime arrives, it's a half-baked let-down.
Margin Call appears a something-must-be-done response to financial calamity. By contrast the original Wall Street, with just two genuinely filled out characters and made during top-of-bubble markets, executed its drama – ingénu gulled by middle aged monster while dealing screens flicker - unforgettably. The way is open for a genuine blockbuster on the banking mess, and in fashioning it the makers should pare the A-list stars, reject technical jargonising and hammer relentlessly on the human tragedy – that of ruined average Joe, less of the perpetrators, jarred but still affluent.
Tell Your Friends