Today’s quick review: Margin Call. On the verge of the 2008 financial crisis, Wall Street analyst Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto) makes a shocking discovery: his firm is massively overleveraged, and even a small dip in the market will cost the company more than it is worth. As the news travels up the corporate ladder, Will Emerson (Paul Bettany), Sam Rogers (Kevin Spacey), and Jared Cohen (Simon Baker) are left with a difficult decision: whether to unload their worthless assets on an unsuspecting market or to bankrupt the firm by keeping them.
Margin Call is a financial drama that depicts the early hours of the 2008 financial crisis. The film focuses on the actions of a single firm as it discovers and reacts to the pending collapse of the housing bubble. As the first to discover the bubble, they are faced with a moral conundrum. To survive the coming devaluation, the firm will have to sell its now-worthless assets to anyone who will buy them, ruining its reputation in the process and triggering the bubble’s inevitable collapse.
Margin Call matches this focused, personal look at the financial crisis with a talented ensemble cast. Zachary Quinto, Paul Bettany, and Kevin Spacey kick off the plot as the lower levels of management, while Simon Baker, Demi Moore, and Jeremy Irons join the cast as the problem escalates. No one character is fleshed out in all that much depth, but their interactions reveal plenty and do an excellent job of exploring the problem from all angles.
Watch Margin Call if you are in the mood for a minimalistic drama with a strong cast and good writing. Stylistically, it is at the opposite end of the spectrum from The Big Short: where The Big Short is an edgy, documentary-style look at the years leading up to the crisis, Margin Call is a sober drama taking place over a matter of hours. Skip Margin Call if you are looking for a more expansive look at the financial crisis or a more personal drama.
7.1 out of 10 on IMDB. I give it a 7.0 for good acting and a focused plot.