Margin Call (2011) Review: One Night in a Wall Street Bank Before the Crash
I watched Margin Call and decided to write a review. The film stars Kevin Spacey and Paul Bettany, along with Jeremy Irons, Zachary Quinto, Demi Moore and Stanley Tucci.
A lot of people were waiting for this film, and I finally saw it too. To be honest, Spacey is good in it, but in my opinion the film itself is empty.
What the film is about
Margin Call is the debut of writer-director J. C. Chandor. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2011 and opened in US theaters on October 21, 2011. The budget was modest, about $3.5 million, and the running time is 107 minutes.
The story takes place over a single day at a large Wall Street investment bank at the start of the 2008 financial crisis. The bank is never named, but it is usually compared to Lehman Brothers.
Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci), the head of risk management, is laid off and hands analyst Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto) a flash drive with his unfinished model. Peter finishes the calculation overnight and realizes that the risk on the bank’s mortgage-backed securities has gone beyond its limits: if prices keep falling, the losses could be comparable to the value of all the bank’s assets. Until morning, management, from head of trading Sam Rogers (Kevin Spacey) up to CEO John Tuld (Jeremy Irons), argues about what to do with the “toxic” assets.
The title comes from the trading term margin call: a demand to put up more collateral when losses on a position eat into the deposit.
My impression
There’s no point in retelling the rest of the plot; it has been described many times already. I expected more. Margin Call is a drama with almost no action: people in suits walk around an office and talk. Maybe that’s exactly what it was meant to be.
But if it weren’t for a bag of popcorn, I’d have fallen asleep.
Bottom line: if you like financial topics, enjoy films where people talk in circles, and have a supply of sunflower seeds, popcorn or something similar, you can watch it. Otherwise, it’s just not worth your time.
What to watch instead
A reader in the comments recommends Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010): not a masterpiece, but it has good actors who actually act instead of just being there. To me, both Wall Street films felt a bit dull too. I liked The Family Man with Nicolas Cage more.
P.S. Maybe this review is very negative, but it is what it is. If you’ve seen the film, please share your opinion in the comments.