Margin Call – Review

Margin Call is hands down the best "finance" movie ever made, featuring an all-star cast and an excellent presentation of its story all around. Tense, smart dialogue, accurate depictions of financial investment products and explanations of most all related concepts, are all mixed into melting pot of pre-2008 Wall Street financial crisis time. Taking place literally the night before the crash and reflecting a fictionalized version of Lehman Brothers, this story shows the joys of leverage, and the ripples of effect that bad investment tools can have when used improperly.

This movie is all dialogue and there is nothing else to expect beyond conversation. I have heard it described as boring, but for me Margin Call was gripping from beginning to end. The strained relationships and decisions that many of the varied corporate characters must rationalize brings a realistic emotional resonance to them. The plethora of veteran actors were able to humanize most of their corporate characters, despite the natural urge everyone has to tell most slick suit wearing used-car wall street traders to eat a bag of dicks.

As the night progresses into the following day, the true nature of humanity comes out as the firm moves into survival mode. The company knows what is coming and must face quite the moral quandary. The results are all too real, but it’s hard to say what we all would choose to do in most of these situations. Self-preservation is real. The only question I really have at the end of this movie is: Was Margin Call’s overall portrayal of reality still way too nice?