36 hours in the death of a Wall Street firm: Margin Call

"Margin Call" from 2011 (?) is a very good movie that fell a little below the radar, probably because of its relatively low budget and sparing use of star actors, but that fulfills its ambitions very well: a strong, seemingly quite accurate, inside look at the tensions in a major (unnamed, but seemingly based on Lehman Bros) Wall Street firm that, over a span of 36 hours, learns that its losses from investments in crappy mortgages for credit swaps will wipe out all of the capital of the firm, sending the economy into a fatal tailspin. The movie does not explore the meltdown - that was done pretty well in the TV movie Too Big to Fail - but instead looks at the efforts of one firm to save its life by dumping all its weak assets as quickly as possible before the street realizes that this is an act of desperation and what they're buying has almost no value. The strengths of this movie - written and directed by someone named Chanda? - are: very tight plot, great sense of the Wall Street ethics or lack thereof, excellent opening sequence that show how the corporate world coldly fires fine employees (think of Up in the Air - or of the sad situation we have seen this week at the beloved Providence Journal), a good dark atmosphere as a crew pulls together over the course of a sleepless night to develop a plan, technical information conveyed in a simple and straightforward way (the CEO wisely asks one of the underlings to speak in plain English, faux-naively claiming he's not smart enough to understand the jargon), smart development of a dilemma that the main characters must face - sell bad assets gradually and smartly with the idea that the firm must maintain relations over the long haul or dump everything right away, even though the firm will have poisoned its relations with the street. CEO (well played by Jeremy Irons) makes a bold decision: sell it all. As he notes, he's paid to make just a few decisions, such as this one. Biggest strength: Kevin Spacey, head of trading desk, who changes and evolves over the course of the movie and ultimately has to make a decision - go along with the boss or get out - and to face the consequences. Movie does not take the obvious path. (Spacey was really nasty once of one of my best friends, but I have to say he improves every movie he's in.) Weaknesses are few, but the two young risk-management guys don't really come clear as characters and are almost expendable to the plot. Film should have been on more best-of lists, but perhaps by 2011 people had their fill of this dark topic.