Film: Margin Call (2011)

Blu-Ray


Review: I just started watching this as a way to help distract myself before going on a first date with the woman who became my wife but it turned out to be a superb film about the beginning of the 2008 Great Recession. Zachary Quinto plays an analyst at a large Wall Street firm who discovers that his company is on the edge of financial disaster. Watching how this discovery travels up the chain of command and how the senior management end up dealing with it is fascinating. The film is well-written and tense throughout with a great cast.

Quotes:
"I run risk management... it just doesn't seem like a natural place to start cutting."

"This could be huge. The losses would be greater than the current value of the company."

"Peter, is this your work?"
"Mostly Mr. Dale's."
"But is this your draft?"
"Yes. Again, expanded on the original work by Mr. Dale. But, yes."
"What's your background?"
"My background?"
"Your CV."
"I've been with the firm for two and a half years, working with Eric that whole time. But I hold a doctorate in engineering, specialty in propulsion, from MIT with a bachelor's from Penn."
"What is a specialty in propulsion, exactly?"
"My thesis was a study in the ways that friction ratios affect steering outcomes in aeronautical use under reduced gravity loads."
"So you're a rocket scientist?"

"Maybe you could tell me what is going on. And please, speak as you might to a young child. Or a golden retriever. It wasn't brains that brought me here; I assure you that."

"So, what you're telling me, is that the music is about to stop, and we're going to be left holding the biggest bag of odorous excrement ever assembled in the history of capitalism."
"Sir, I not sure that I would put it that way, but let me clarify using your analogy. What this model shows is the music, so to speak, just slowing. If the music were to stop, as you put it, then this model wouldn't even be close to that scenario. It would be considerably worse."
"Let me tell you something, Mr. Sullivan. Do you care to know why I'm in this chair with you all? I mean, why I earn the big bucks."
"Yes."
"I'm here for one reason and one reason alone. I'm here to guess what the music might do a week, a month, a year from now. That's it. Nothing more. And standing here tonight, I'm afraid that I don't hear... a... thing. Just... silence."

"You know, the funny thing is, tomorrow if all of this goes tits up they're gonna crucify us for being too reckless but if we're wrong, and everything gets back on track? Well then, the same people are gonna laugh till they piss their pants cause we're gonna all look like the biggest pussies God ever let through the door."

"So you think we might have put a few people out of business today. That its all for naught. You've been doing that everyday for almost forty years, Sam. And if this is all for naught then so is everything out there. Its just money; its made up. Pieces of paper with pictures on it so we don't have to kill each other just to get something to eat. It's not wrong. And it's certainly no different today than its ever been. 1637, 1797, 1819, 37, 57, 84, 1901, 07, 29, 1937, 1974, 1987 (Jesus, didn't that fuck up me up good) 92, 97, 2000 and whatever we want to call this. It's all just the same thing over and over. We can't help ourselves. And you and I can't control it, or stop it, or even slow it. Or even ever-so-slightly alter it. We just react. And we make a lot money if we get it right. And we get left by the side of the side of the road if we get it wrong. And there have always been and there always will be the same percentage of winners and losers. Happy foxes and sad sacks. Fat cats and starving dogs in this world. Yeah, there may be more of us today than there's ever been. But the percentages-they stay exactly the same."

5 out of 5 Stars