Lesser Known Movies you must watch - 22

Margin Call

Cast: Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons, Paul Bettany, Stanley Tucci, Zachary Quinto, Simon Baker, Demi Moore (big star cast with mere 3.5 Million budget)

When we talk about movies made on 2008 Recession of sub-prime (financial) crisis , we think about The Big Short or Wall Street or Inside Job but there is one movie which shows the impact of recession from the other side i.e. on the investment banks specifically just one bank who realizes that it will be a victim of financial collapse and takes a decision to sell off its assets within 24 hours before market realizing the risk.

The reason for such a big star cast was mainly to show the emotions and ensuring that the financial talks between the actors are compelling. The movie has done justice and scored full marks practically in all the areas specially considering the fact that it’s a directorial debut for J.C.Chandor who was accoladed by an academy nomination for Best Original Screenplay for this movie. The best part about the movie is that the financial bank is never named throughout even though you would find similarities with falling of Goldman Sachs and Lehman brothers during financial crisis.

The movie begin with the usual mass layoffs happening in the bank where the head of risk management  Dave (Stanley Tucci) is also requested to go. When he leaves, he is handed over a USB drive by one of the risk Analysts Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto) to investigate. Sullivan while working on Dave’s project discovers that company’s current volatility of market securities has exceeded its levels and due to the company’s excess leverage if the firm assets are decreased by 25% , the loss for the firm is greater than its total value i.e. firm will go bankrupt.

In starts the round of meetings between Floor head Sam (Kevin Spacey) , Divison heads Jared (Simon Baker) , Chief Risk Management Officer Sarah (Demi Moore), and CEO John tudd (Jeremy Irons) hindsight how it had happened and why was it not reported. The discussion is to sell the firm toxic assets to save their grace which would mean creating lot of enemies in the financial market or finding other alternatives to stop the crisis or minimize its impact. The dialogues between Spacey and Irons are breath-taking  specially seeing Spacey on the other side who is opposing the sale of assets. This movie also shows that gains and losses are part of economic cycle along with the layoff’s and there are just few people who would gain from such catastrophe. Do watch our 22^nd Recommended movie for yourself to see if they succeeded in selling the assets and to which limit they went to sell-off the same.

SM Movie Geeks