Gire: 'Big Short' long on bold outrage-fueled comedy
If you don't understand subprime mortgages, a naked Margot Robbie in a bubble bath explains them while sipping a martini.
Don't get those repackaged mortgages? Master chef Anthony Bourdain chops up three-day-old halibut and makes a stew metaphor for how banks bundle together and sell inferior products.
Other luminaries offer mini-tutorials like these in Adam McKay's outrage-fueled, fact-based, black comedy "The Big Short," one of the boldest, most maddening, innovative and cracked-out crazy movies I've ever seen.
"The Big Short," based on Michael Lewis' book, breaks down the complex, complicated collusion of corruptive corporate contrivances that led to the mortgage market collapse of 2008.
Writer/director McKay, a former Chicago Second City member, turns "The Big Short" into a cinematic "Sesame Street" for adults, an engaging tutorial that explains how the combination of greed, malfeasance, corruption, incompetence and sheer apathy conspired to bring America to its financial knees.
Instead of the Count teaching children about numbers on "Sesame Street," "The Big Short" teaches adults about accounting, Wall Street style, starting with Ryan Gosling's sleazoid banker Jared Vennett as our host.
The slithery Vennett talks directly to us, giving us the inside scoop of Wall Street in 2005, when the creation of subprime loan packages signaled the start of the end.
The protagonists aren't even heroes. They're men who saw the mess coming and did what any self-respecting capitalists would do: profit from it.
Dr. Michael Burry (a strangely, perfectly nuanced Christian Bale), a barefoot stocks analyst with a glass eye and zero social skills, examines thousands of mortgages bundled inside the securities that back the entire banking industry.
Burry spots an alarming number of subprime home loans about to go belly-up. Then, he notices that fraud claims are at a historic high, just as they were in the 1920s. So he persuades bankers to create something called "credit default swaps" that pay off big if the economy tanks.
What do banks have to lose? The economy is solid, right?
The moral voice, such as it is in "The Big Short," belongs to shrill, self-centered hedge-fund investor Mark Baum (Steve Carell). Unlike his cohorts, Baum possesses a conscience, and his short fuse brings it to the fore.
Brad Pitt also plays a seasoned veteran investor, one who lays out the terrible costs of the impending crisis to two giddy, young entrepreneurs (John Margaro and Finn Wittrock) who stand to profit from America's broken banks.
McKay gives Baum and Burry back stories to flesh out their characters and win our sympathies, but those don't work very well, and they're not needed for these non-heroes.
Still, McKay gives "The Big Short" some nice touches, especially Melissa Leo's corrupt, sunglasses-wearing S&P executive, suffering from vision problems.
McKay's comic sensibilities and sense of outrage boost "The Big Short" into a gloriously engaging work of cinematic journalism that uses fictional devices of drama to expose the nub of truth.
I came out of McKay's movie shaking my head in disbelief that the American system could so easily be brought to the brink of disaster by its own hand. I came out with one question pounding in my brain: How stupid can we be?
“The Big Short”
★ ★ ★ ★
Starring: Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Brad Pitt, Marisa Tomei, Melissa Leo
Directed by: Adam McKay
Other: A Paramount Pictures release. Rated R for language, nudity, sexual situations. 130 minutes