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Published: 12 January, 2012
by DAN CARRIER

Directed by JC Chandor
Certificate PG

Rating: 4 Out Of 5 Stars

The collapse of the banking industry in 2008 is the topic of this superb thriller.

Starring Kevin Spacey, Paul Bettany and Jeremy Irons as three layers of investment banking management with a toxic balance sheet to deal with, it fictionalises the events in a swanky uber-rich investment bank in Wall Street during a disastrous 24-hour period when the money-shovellers realise they have mucked up, big time.

We watch as they face a series of gut-churning decisions – many of which are highly immoral – to save their skins.

Even though it was just three years ago, it is hard to fathom exactly the upheaval that took place overnight, and which this thriller draws its storyline from.

In America, landmark institutions – the brands of the American Dream since the 1950s consumer boom – disappeared: General Motors and Chrysler declared bankrupt, Merrill Lynch panic-sold its guts over a weekend, and the big beasts of Wall Street, such IndyMac, Washington Mutual, Bear Sterns and the Lehman Brothers – all went.

Margin Call takes us through 24 hours of traders first realising they have made a mess then trying to shimmy their way clear to protect their seven-figure salaries.

Superbly acted and making a complicated topic accessible, it is one of a wave of films that deals with the causes of today’s Depression.

The film is littered with incomprehensible banking jargon and will make you pinch yourself at the thought of how utterly ridiculous modern capitalism is – that these people who spend their lives pushing buttons on computers and watching figures go up and down are the best-paid people on the planet.

They have not created anything.

They were not toiling with scythe or hoe, nor creating something of beauty. They were making what seemed like sure-fire bets and reaping the benefits.

It will make you feel we need to re-draw how we organise our systems of finance and be influenced by a William Cobbett-style philosophy where people worked together to create the real things we need, namely food and a place to shelter.