Margin Call

Margin Call takes place in 2008, on the night before the global financial system went into free fall. It begins with an analyst in a major financial firm's Risk Management department smelling a rat, snowballs into late-night and early-morning meetings of increasingly powerful and terrified members of the firm, and culminates in the run that was the next day's market activity. It's terrifying stuff, way more terrifying than any number of dudes in any number of masks chasing any number of college kids through the night.

It's also annoyingly writerly. Many of the characters get big speeches, and those speeches nearly always sound more like the finger-wagging of hippie writers than the misgivings of mathematicians. Whenever Margin Call pulled me into its world through its spot-on set design and world class performances, it pulled me right back out again when some character started moaning about how he could have been building bridges instead of getting rich.

Nevertheless, the film's sense of mounting dread giving way to panic was effective; and its snappy editing and kinetic (for a film that felt like a stage adaptation) photography kept things moving along. Margin Call caught me up in its narrative in spite of its preachiness. Further, even though I knew how it was going to end, I wanted to know how it was going to end. Overall, I call this one as a good film. But I'd rather see the play.

21

Recently, I flew a long trip with a copilot who knew one of the people involved in the MIT card counting scheme upon which the film _21_ is based. He hated the movie because it so distorted and sexed up the facts of the case that it barely deserved the label, "Based on a true story." I countered that _21_ had no obligation to be a faithful retelling of the actual events. Its only obligation, I asserted, was to be a good movie. He didn't buy it, but I stand by it. Narrative film's first duty is to entertain. If your picture can't do that, don't bother.

So, does _21_ entertain? Yes, it does, though not particularly well. The film tells a (sexed up) version of the MIT card counting story, in which a team of MIT math wizards mastered the only way to beat the house at blackjack. It throws in some sex, some violence, some cool, and generally keeps things rocking along for an hour and a half. It doesn't blow you away; it doesn't stay with you; but it eats the time on a transatlantic flight well enough.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement, is it? Perhaps if it were more true to life.