MARGIN CALL: High stakes thrills
Those looking for an adult entertainment alternative to Puss in Boots or Paranormal Activity 3 (last weekend’s top two movies) would be well advised to search out Margin Call, the riveting business thriller from a first-time writer/director. And search you will: for some mysterious reason this smart thriller packed with acting talent is only showing at a few small theaters. (You can also find it as a special movie-on-demand on Cablevision for $6.95.) Read these Reel Answers to see if, for you, it’s worth the hunt.
Margin Call
Directed by J. C. Chandor
Starring Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons, Paul Bettany, Stanley Tucci, Zachary Quinto
What is Margin Call about?
The film tightly focuses on a tense 24 hours in a financial firm (patterned after Lehman Bros) after they discover they’re holding a huge amount of bad mortgages and facing certain doom—and what they’ll do to stay alive and kicking. The thrills come from both the ticking time bomb elements of the plot and the great pleasure you get from watching one actor after another stroll onto the stage to play his part—only to be upstaged by an even bigger heavyweight. The best scenes are the quiet but life-or-death dialogues between Jeremy Irons and Kevin Spacey. Who—or whose career—will survive?
The movie is a thriller about high finance. How technical is it?
The running joke in the movie is that only a lowly risk analyst, played by Zachary Quinto (also one of the film’s young producers), understands all the esoteric nuts and bolts of the problem. But no worries—the executives at the firm and we the audience grasp the essential bit: this is it, the end game. How are they going to play it? It’s a fascinating 24 hours.
Who are the creative people behind this film?
The director isn’t a big name like Oliver Stone of Wall Street fame, but rather a first-time director/writer named J. C. Chandor, age 37. Chandor’s father was apparently a lifer at Merrill Lynch, and you can’t help but think that informed the very human character of Sam Rogers, the 34-year sales vet that Kevin Spacey fully embodies in the film. Chandor the writer brings a David Mamet briskness and humor to the dialogue, juxtaposed with more than a few sobering moments. This impressive film from independent studio Lionsgate was made on a tiny-for-Hollywood ($3.5 million) budget. Just enough money to pay for the high-profile cast, perhaps, but not enough to mount a razzle-dazzle marketing campaign. The producers must be hoping the stellar reviews and word-of-mouth will do that job.
How are the actors in Margin Call?
You know you have a good movie when even Penn Badgley, a young actor from Gossip Girl, has some memorable lines and moments. The image that comes to mind when watching this expert ensemble cast is that cartoon line of fish, each one bigger than the last, eating the one in front of it. On the edge of your seat, you watch an increasingly tense series of memorable scenes with Paul Bettany, Stanley Tucci, Simon Baker, Demi Moore, Kevin Spacey, and Jeremy Irons as the biggest shark of all. All wonderfully distinct characters, and yet never hammy, cartoonish icons like Wall Street’s Gordon Gekko.
What are some of the themes of this film?
One surprising theme is the toll a company’s layoffs take on the survivors—the ones who stay behind and pick up the shovels after the others (sometimes to their great relief) have left. Of course, often the last ones left are the ones who play the game the best, and that’s what we see playing out here—what do the last survivors do when even their survival is threatened? Another theme is the corrupting influence of power and money—hardly a novel theme, but well portrayed in more than a few silent scenes where characters reckon with their fates, alone.
Will I need tissues?
Perhaps, due to an odd but touching ending to the film.
My Reel Answers column aims to boil down film reviewing to its essence: answering questions (without divulging key plot points) you might have about a popular movie before plunking down your hard-earned money to see it.
Please visit http://reelanswers.net to see past movies and DVDs I’ve reviewed, and let me know what questions you have about upcoming movies that I can answer.
When not watching and reviewing movies, I run a consulting business helping successful book authors ramp up their online presence via websites, ebooks, and social media at http://laura-e-kelly.com. ~Laura
Adam has worked in the local news industry for the past two decades in Westchester County and the broader Hudson Valley. Read more from Adam’s author bio here.