After having watched “Too Big to Fail” a couple of days ago, an HBO docu-drama regarding the 2008 collapse of the nation’s housing market, I decided to rewatch the movie “Margin Call” since I haven’t reviewed it yet and it was available on Netflix. Thanks to my infamous movie amnesia, I couldn’t even remember that one of the main stars of this film was Kevin Spacey. But what I did take away from the film was that it made a big impact on me and that I felt that it was a much better film than “Too big to Fail”. So did “Margin Call” live up to my initial impression? Here’s my review.
This is a fictional account of one company’s dealing with the housing market crash of 2008. I did like this film a lot better than “too big to fail”, but really they’re two separate films. “Too big to fail” covered many different companies and covered different back door dealings this film was just one company’s account but it was much more in-depth into that company and felt real. Also, I would argue that this film’s acting was much better than “Too big to fail” even though that film had many more big-name stars. Margin call starred Kevin Spacey Simon Baker and Jeremy Irons as the main big named stars. When their accountants discovered that their risky investment holdings outweighed the entire value of the company, they had to make a decision quickly, and their decision was mass selloff of all their investments to anybody who would be willing to purchase it. They discovered the problem at 10 o’clock and worked through the night on a plan. In the morning the plan was to eliminate all the risky holding by selling up selling it all off, most of it before lunch before everyone else figured out what was going on. This film was chronicling the start of the collapse of the housing market. Like I said it was well produced well acted, the musical score was great and it was well put together, highly recommended.
*****
