This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Oct. 20, 2011 - If you already blame Wall Street high-rollers for creating the ongoing financial crisis, "Margin Call" is not going to change your mind, but it might deepen your understanding of how they might have done it. "Margin Call" is the taut, suspenseful tale of a climactic day in the inner workings of a huge, multinational New York investment firm much like Lehman Brothers, which declared bankruptcy in 2008 after helping to trigger the economic disaster whose end is not in sight.
The movie seizes our attention from the opening scenes, as an unnamed brokerage firm that occupies a sizable chunk of glass in Midtown Manhattan fires almost half of its traders and brokers and analysts in what we are led to believe is a fairly regular, Darwinian winnowing. Among those departing is a longtime risk management analyst named Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci). As Eric leaves the building, under guard, juggling two boxes of his personal effects, he manages to slip a flash drive to a young former protege, Peter Sullivan (Zachary Qunto). Eric tells Peter it contains something he was working on, and warns him, "Be careful."
Peter waits until everyone but the cleaning lady has gone home, plugs in the flash drive, and is so shocked at the potential financial disaster he sees on the screen that he calls his boss, who calls his boss, etc. Finally, in the dead of night, we get to the top, a sleek aristocrat named "John Tuld," which rhymes with Richard Fuld, the actual former head of Lehman Brothers. Tuld is played deliciously by Jeremy Irons, who has long benefited from the fact that the devil has the best lines.
When Irons licks his lips and says, with an ingratiating smile, "There's a lot of money to be made cleaning up this mess," neglecting to add that he played a big part in making the mess, it's almost impossible not to laugh. We are, of course, laughing at ourselves.
Tuld and his top executives, played by, among others, Kevin Spacey, Simon Baker and Demi Moore, discuss what was on the flash drive in enigmatic terms, and part of the suspense in the movie comes from waiting to hear them say something that will pin down the nature of the toxic assets in the firm's coffers, although we kind of know. Finally, someone uses the word "mortgage" and, if you've followed the market-collapse story at all, or have seen Charles Peterson's definitive documentary "Inside Job," you understand that the firm is stuck with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of soon-to-be-worthless sub-prime mortgage derivatives. What "John Tuld" decides to do with them as soon as the markets open in the morning is breathtakingly nasty, and completely believable.
"Margin Call" was written and directed by young J.C. Chandor, the son of a New York stockbroker. Candor writes crisp, blunt, realistic dialogue. The movie would probably work as a play, since most of the action takes place in a single set of offices and the driving force of the plot is fast, smart, devious talk. But Chandor prevented the movie from looking like a filmed stage drama by hiring a sharp, experienced cinematographer, Frank G. De Marco, who had helped turn the family tragedy "Rabbit Hole" from a play into a very good movie.
"Margin Call" has considerable visual energy without overuse of the kind of zoom-lens camera games that are staples on crime-lab television shows. Although there are no car chases or exploding buildings, the movie is being billed as a thriller, and it is one. Like many thrillers, it's about the stupefying power of greed. And, like many thrillers, "Margin Call" comes down to a race against the clock. Tuld and his top executives have just a few hours - essentially overnight - to decide how they are going to deal with the massive miscalculation they have made, and they don't spend much of that time factoring morality into the equation. It will come as no surprise to learn that this thriller has no heroes, although it has many villains, and countless victims.
Opens Friday, Oct. 21
"Blackthorn"
The provocative premise of "Blackthorn" is that the outlaw Butch Cassidy survived the shootout depicted at the end of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and is now living under the name of Blackthorn in the mountains of Bolivia. Finally, a grizzled old man, he decides he wants to return to the United States and see his family before he dies.
Blackthorn/Cassidy is played by Sam Shepard, which is the most interesting thing about the movie. On his way out of Bolivia, the former outlaw encounters some old enemies and a new partner. He has to shoot his way out of trouble, and once again, as in the earlier movie, has to ride for miles and miles and miles to try and escape a posse that won't stop chasing him. "Blackthorn" is fairly entertaining, although Spanish director Mateo Gil is perhaps too fond of long, slow, arty takes in which nothing much happens.
Opens Friday, Oct. 21
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.