This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Sept. 1, 2011 - It's hard to believe that there were any heroes in the financial madness that almost collapsed the world economy in 2008, but the gripping if, at times, stylistically overbearing new documentary "Chasing Madoff" reveals a few, most prominently a once-obscure Boston financial analyst named Harry Markopolos.
In the late 1990s, a client challenged Harry to come up with an investment strategy that would equal the otherworldly returns of a secretive Wall Street investment manager named Bernie Madoff, who controlled billions of dollars in investments and seemed unable to have a bad year. A cursory look at what records were available quickly convinced Harry that what Madoff was doing was statistically impossible. It was, he explained, the equivalent of a baseball player hitting over .900.
The comparison makes the point very well, standing alone. However, producer-director Jeff Prosserman, refusing to trust the strength of his material, cuts to a film clip of the legendary Red Sox star Ted Williams - lifetime batting average .344 -- hitting a home run. Throughout the film, Prosserman interrupts the narrative flow with sometimes garish images - shots of croupiers raking in chips in Las Vegas, bloody scenes from old gangster movies, a recurring symbolic bonfire. The images are supposed to be illustrative, and are presumably intended to add energy to the film. All are unnecessary, and some are positively irritating.
Still, discombobulating side trips aside, "Chasing Madoff" is a classic detective story, including the guns. We follow Harry, who became obsessed with the chase, as he and a few sidekicks trace Madoff's financial dealings and discover to their astonishment that, directly and indirectly, the financier's clients include some very wealthy and very powerful men and women in the United States and abroad. As it becomes increasingly clear that Madoff is running a vast Ponzi scheme, Harry turns incriminating documents over to the Securities and Exchange Commission, which supposedly regulates financial markets in the United States. When he gets nowhere with the SEC, he gives the story to Forbes magazine and to the Wall Street Journal. They do nothing.
Harry decides that Madoff is, in effect, too big to bring down, too closely tied to important people in the private and public sector, and he begins to fear for his life. He carries a pistol everywhere and instructs his wife on the use of a rifle to repel home invaders.
It is impossible to tell if Harry is being paranoiac or realistic, but the documentary is a convincing portrait of Harry's increasing obsession with the Madoff case and, as almost 10 years pass and nobody seems to be listening to him, his increasing fear of a deadly attack on him and his family.
In the end, the financial markets crash, taking Madoff with them as desperate investors try to withdraw money that isn't there. We are shown extensive interviews with people whose lives were ruined by Madoff. But we are left with the impression, as we were with last year's superb "Inside Job," that very little has changed on Wall Street or in Washington. In one telling scene, in a congressional hearing on the financial collapse, top executives of the SEC are asked what percentage of SEC officials leave government and go to work on Wall Street. The answers are evasive, but the gist is clear: lots of them.
Opens Friday Sept. 2
'Senna'
In the late 1980s and the early 1990s, Brazilian Ayrton Senna was the top driver in Formula One, the major international road-racing series. At the height of his career, he engaged in a series of memorable and dangerous duels with French champion Alan Prost. Their competition was so ferocious that, the vivid new documentary "Senna" suggests, each man seems to have won a world's championship by crashing into the other.
In reprising the brief but dramatic career of Senna, director Asif Kapadia uses a remarkable collection of live racing footage, much of it from inside Senna's car as it blasts along the straightaways and gears down for the turns in such glamorous settings as Monte Carlo. There are even scratchy film clips of Senna's relatively innocent days as a go-cart driver, days he later viewed with nostalgia as being free of the outside pressure and nasty politics of Formula One racing. And there is riveting footage of his two crucial wrecks with Prost as well as of Senna's final race. You don't have to be a fan of auto racing to enjoy "Senna."
"Senna" is respectful of its subject without trying to present him as an unflawed hero, leaving judgments up to the audience. At times the self-assured driver seems clearly in the wrong. But it is also clear that he is battling a Formula One establishment that likes to play favorites - to the point of stopping a race before it is over to prevent the wrong driver (Senna) from winning.
Opens Friday Sept. 2
Harper Barnes, the author of Never Been A Time: The 1917 Race Riot That Sparked The Civil Rights Movement, is a special contributor to the Beacon.