Movie Review - "Margin Call" (2011) *1/2

     This was a difficult movie for me to rate and I'm going to preface this review by saying that even though I have given this movie a very low rating, I think it will definitely work for some people. This movie has one major flaw that led to the rating...I simply didn't understand about 75% of it. I consider myself a somewhat intelligent person, but I have my weak topics that I'm clueless on. One of those is the topic of Wall Street and investments and the politics of it. All that jazz. I should understand stuff like this as it is important, but I simply don't. For that reason, I had a lot of trouble following the lingo of this movie which is not on a beginner's level. Therefore, if stuff like that interests you and you understand it, you may get more out of this than I did.

     Margin Call is a fictionalized interpretation of the 2008 financial crisis. As the film opens, a large group of layoffs are taking place at a financial firm that bears more than a passing resemblance to Lehman Bros., even though the firm is never given a formal name. One of the employees being laid off is Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci), who is working on a potential trouble spot for the firm but he is having difficulty putting all of the pieces together. On his way out of the building, he passes off the project to a young intern named Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto) with two words of advice, "Be careful." Sullivan stays overnight to work on the file that Eric gives him and what he finds sets off a chain of events that will have financial implications across the globe. Over the next 24 hours, the hierarchy of the firm are bought in to make decisions on what the company should do. It becomes apparent that disaster is imminent and it's during this time when decisions on ethical issues will effect the lives of millions of people.

     There's a good movie here, I can feel it under the surface. The film is written and directed by newcomer J.C. Chandor and features an A-level class of thespians such as Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons, Demi Moore, Paul Bettany and Simon Baker. I was never turned off by the acting and Spacey is solid as always. There were no problems there for me. The screenplay just simply didn't work for me and as I said earlier, that's my fault more than anything. But I have to be honest when doing a review and because I didn't understand a lot of what was a going on, I found myself bored a lot and watching the clock. For those reasons, I have to take away from the film. That being said, if you feel like it's something that would interest you, by all means give it a shot. I hope you find a hidden gem here. I did not.