It's conflicting to empathize with Carell's character, who is mourning the death of his brother, and still recognize that his actions are morally baseless. But McKay is centered on those who knew what was coming and did what feels like the wrong thing. You get a small sense of those lives throughout the film, especially when characters visit abandoned housing developments and meet mortgage brokers intent on selling as many mortgages as they can convince one person to buy. It's meant to leave you angry, presumably, especially as you are coerced into rooting for a group of men (and it's pretty much just men) who made millions of dollars by betting that the market would crash and destroy average people's lives. The story's endpoint-our nation's financial collapse-isn't funny, but McKay plays the movie for laughs, entertaining you as he unfolds the heavily problematic circumstances that left thousands without homes. McKay allows the film to be guided by Ryan Gosling's fast-talking Jared Vennett, a Wall Street douche who spins the market predictions to his gain and who spends much of his screen time directly addressing the camera while wearing what appears to be a questionable wig. The film is dense, both in plot and subject matter, but most of the time it doesn't matter. A money manager based on Steve Eisman, played with prickly edge by Steve Carell, follows suit, as does Ben Rickert, a composite character underplayed by a heavily bearded Brad Pitt. (It's been reported that Bale wore Burry's actual t-shirts in the film.) Saddled with a glass eye and a predilection for blaring metal while calculating figures, Burry sets the film's action in motion, sending out a chain reaction as he persuades banks to sell him millions of dollars in credit default swaps. As usual, Bale sinks himself so far into the role it's hard to see where the character ends and the actor begins. Michael Burry, a former neurologist who created hedge fund Scion Capital and was one of the first to predict the impending subprime mortgage collapse. And you're rooting for them the entire time.Ĭhristian Bale is the film's standout as Dr. For better or morally worse, these people bet against market for their own gain. Your understanding of the financial issues is secondary to the movie's plot, which follows characters based on the real-life people who predicted that the housing bubble would burst long before it happened. Then, enlist filmmaker Adam McKay-he of Funny Or Die and Anchorman fame-to direct the film adaptation, released today nationwide. How do you enliven what should be an impenetrable topic like America's 2007 financial crisis, spawned by the bursting of the housing bubble and centered around concepts like credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligation? For one, put incredibly talented journalist Michael Lewis on it-his 2010 book, The Big Short, gave us non-MBAs a rudimentary understanding of the complex issues at play.

The big short by michael lewis