Today’s quick review: The Big Short. Before the onset of the 2008 financial crisis, several investors had the luck or foresight to predict the collapse of the housing market and bet against the market. Among them were Michael Burry (Christian Bale), an eccentric hedge fund manager; Mark Baum (Steve Carrell), an irascible fund manager with a keen sense of justice; Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling), an agent of a big bank; and Charlie Geller (John Magaro), Jamie Shipley (Finn Wittrock), and Ben Rickert (Brad Pitt), a duo of small-time fund managers and their ex-banker friend.
The Big Short is a financial drama centered around the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis. The film follows the travails of the handful of investors who saw the crisis coming, including their investigations of the bubble, their attempts to short the real estate market, and their difficulties holding their positions until the bubble burst.
The Big Short is one part movie and one part documentary. Apart from its details, the film is non-fiction, chronicling real events and real investors with an impressive cast and stylized presentation. The documentary aspects enter in with the film’s direct, extensive explanations of the financial aspects of the bubble and its focus on the market more than its characters.
To its credit, The Big Short is punchier than the typical documentary. The story aspects of the film and its wide cast of characters give it a touch of humanity and show off the peculiarities of the housing bubble firsthand. The acting is strong, the language is colofrul, and the investors’ parallel efforts provide several complementary perspectives on the bubble.
However, The Big Short is not satisfying as a story. The characters take back seat to the crisis itself, and the movie’s limited attempts to peak into the characters’ personal lives are not all that compelling. The thesis of the movie is not dramatized well, making much of the story the repetition of one central point rather than a gradual build-up to a moment of truth.
The Big Short does do a good job of illustrating the housing bubble using helpful analogies, fourth-wall-breaking narration, and gratuitous celebrity cameos. The technical aspects of the film can still be hard to follow, but The Big Short manages to convey the gist of complex financial instruments to a lay audience, which is no easy feat.
The film’s stylization is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, its informal style and self-aware humor spice up the financial industry to significant degree. On the other hand, it relies a little too much on gimmicks. Pop culture references, news clips, stock photos, and arbitrary songs are shoehorned into the film without much subtlety or vision. These stylistic choices make The Big Short come across as cheap and eclectic.
How much you like The Big Short will depend on how compelling you find its core message. The neglect and abuse leading up to the crisis are shocking, and The Big Short does a good job of hammering home this point. But for someone already convinced of this, most of the movie is redundant. The crisis is front and center, and while this lets the movie explore it in more detail, it also negates any chance of a compelling story outside the crisis.
Watch The Big Short if you are interested in learning more about the 2008 financial crisis through the eyes of those who saw it coming. The Big Short is a very good summary of the event and is well worth a watch for informational purposes. But as entertainment, The Big Short falls somewhat flat. Skip it if you are looking for a satisfying story or any sort of escapism.
7.8 out of 10 on IMDB. I give it a 6.5 for offering a thorough look at real events but very little entertainment value; your rating will be higher if you enjoy documentaries for their own sake, appreciate good acting even without a story to house it, or are interested in finance.