The Big Short [Region 1] [Blu-ray]

'The Big Short' is a sometimes humorous film that reveals the financial shenanigans that lead to the biggest financial meltdown since 1929. It has humorous moments to lighten the load of all those financially complex terms - and the idea of Margot Robbie sitting in a bubble bath explaining what sub-prime actually means was an excellent idea.Indeed, as we are still suffering the effects of this crash the quote at the beginning by Mark Twain - "It ain't what you know that gets you in trouble, It's what you know for sure that just ain't so"It is a fascinating tale of how the collapse of the banking industry and the idea that 'safe as houses' would no longer be so - forecast by an investment analyst years before it occurred that keeps us interested. The Short of the title is not the collapse, but the idea of betting against the bank, in the belief that it will fail - the exploration of how deregulation lead to financial products that were based on absolute sh*te to be sold globally; to underpin the economies of so many countries with a steaming pile of 'dogsh*t' and then wonder why it failed.Despite the humour, this is a complex and serious subject which the film explores with a fine eye for the details involved and allowing the normal person to understand the subject. It is a long film, as to explain the complex processes involved takes time, but there are some exceptional actors involved to make this entertaining and educational.Steve Carrell in a serious role is very good, and Ryan Gosling also playing against type, with the surprise appearance of Mr Pitt all contributing to a great ensemble cast. Great acting, and clear character definition through the film, despite the need to focus on the financial explanations.

This is a film about the banking crisis of 2007 and the maverick investors who saw it coming. Christian Bale plays the investor with a glass eye who first saw the trend and bets big against the market [ that is the Short referred to in the title] , Steve Carrel plays the head of an investment group who get wind of the problems in the market through sheer dumb luck! Ryan Gosling is a banker who is willing to move against the banks. It is an astonishing story of greed on an epic scale for which ordinary people paid the price.The performances are all great with Brad Pitt playing the role of a disillusioned investment banker helping two young investors to enter the market. What sets this film apart is its style it uses a sort of montage approach meaning that it edits together images to tell the story such as pop videos and still photographs also the actors, mainly Ryan Goslings character break the third wall in other words they talk direct to camera. The director is aware that banking is a very complicated subject so to explain there are inserts by people playing themselves such as Selena Gomez and my favourite Margot Robbie explaining the concept of shorting from a bubble bath!!! the style of the film gives it pace and keeps the viewer interested, it is a fascinating true story and deserved its Oscar nominations. But one caveat if you are offended by bad language there is an awful lot of it in this film, but overall it is well worth watching repeatedly if only to understand the fraud of the banks.

I loved The Big Short with Christian Bale and Brad Pitt, as I also loved Margin Call starring Jeremy Irons, Paul Bettany, and Kevin Spacey. Two very different ways of dealing with the financial crash of 2007 - 2008. Two very good films.Margin Call is looking at the crash from the perspective of a company that realises that it is holding too much by way of bundled up, collateralised, sub-prime mortgages, and sells them on just in time to avert its own total demise, although some employees do lose their jobs.The Big Short is looking at the crash from the perspective of different people who all think that they are the only ones to see that mortgages granted to large numbers of people who are less than ideal mortgage borrowers is leading to house prices inevitably going up as a lot of money enters the housing market that should never have entered the housing market, and that this will inevitably lead to bust as many of those less than ideal borrowers default on their obligation to repay, and, here's the really important point, the equity in those heavily mortgaged properties is not enough to repay the lenders because those properties were too highly valued when the mortgages were taken out and when sold, if sold, would be sold for a value below the amount borrowed against that property, sometimes well below the amount actually borrowed.Although what is explained in The Big Short, and not explained in Margin Call, is that what happened was that those sub-prime mortgages were collateralised, bundled up, and each bundle given an inaccurately high credit rating by Credit Rating Agencies that had a financial incentive in giving an inaccurately high credit rating, and then sold as being a good investment to people looking to get a good yield on their money.Not only were these bundles of inaccurately highly rated sub-prime mortgages sold to private individuals, they were also sold to banks that then looked to be more wealthy, financially solid, than they actually were.If I have understood it correctly, the company in Margin Call is holding a lot of these bundles containing a lot of sub-prime mortgages, and simply sells those bundles just before those same bundles really collapse in value. In Margin Call the company does what Lehman Brothers should have done if its staff had been bright enough.The Big Short is quite different in that the protagonists specifically bet that these bundles will indeed collapse in value. I, personally, never quite got to understand the precise procedure for placing these bets, and maybe the inability to keep it simple should cost the film a star. I think that they do their best to explain it, but I don't think that they quite pulled it off. Ditto really for Margin Call. Margin Call did not quite explain enough or not clearly enough, I thought, what the product was that the company had to off-load so precipitately.The Big Short was excellent in its ending. People who should have known better did lend to housebuyers who they must have known were never likely to be able to repay their loans. Credit rating agencies gave bundles of these sub-prime mortgages a credit rating that they must have known was too high. Neither the reckless lenders nor the probably outright dishonest credit rating agencies were brought to book for the disaster they wrought.