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REVIEWS


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Margin Call REVIEWED BY DAVID D’ARCY


Margin Call takes another shot at the financial crisis, through a 24-hour window on an invest- ment firm which dumps billions in toxic mort- gages when those assets risk sinking the business. The boardroom drama, JC Chandor’s feature debut, shows the financial cynics to be the first men selling and the last men standing. With a dream-team cast and polished directing


and writing for a newcomer whose credits are mostly television commercials, Margin Call will test whether financial-meltdown epics are them- selves toxic assets. Kevin Spacey, Stanley Tucci and Jeremy Irons can still tap a deep fan base, even if the potboiler is thought to be for yesterday’s papers.


Downsized at the beginning of the story from a


never-named investment firm in a sleek Manhat- tan skyscraper, risk analyst Eric Dale (Tucci) warns youthful underlings (Zachary Quinto and Penn Badgley) that the firm’s assets are more volatile than was disclosed. Panic erupts upward to execs Kevin Spacey and Demi Moore, and to urbane CEO Jeremy Irons, as the firm weighs up its endangered future at an all-night vigil. Chandor knows the corporate swagger. He pro-


moted it in commercials for years. In Margin Call, he has built tension around an ensemble, rather than a central villain, like Michael Douglas in the Wall Street franchise. Chandor’s panicked executives convey the chill


of imminent failure among cocky males who thought finance was a game which made you rich


n 16 Screen International in Berlin February 11, 2011 COMPETITION


US. 2010. 109mins Director/screenplay JC Chandor Production companies Myriad Pictures, Benaroya Pictures, Before The Door, Washington Square Films, Untitled Entertainment, Sakonnet Capital Partners International sales Myriad Pictures, www. myriadpictures.com US distributor Roadside Attractions/Lionsgate Producers Neal Dodson, Zachary Quinto, Corey Moosa, Michael Benaroya, Robert Ogden Barnum, Joe Jenckes Cinematography Frank DeMarco Editor Pete Beaudreau Music Nathan Larson Main cast Kevin Spacey, Paul Bettany, Jeremy Irons, Zachary Quinto, Penn Badgley, Demi Moore, Stanley Tucci, Simon Baker


and the downside of risk was for everybody else. His script fuels intensity by packing the drama into a tight overnight window, and his cast keeps afloat a familiar story which might have sunk with lesser actors. Still, the saga of executive group crisis, with


sub-plots interwoven throughout the corporate ladder, is not a business crucible on the level of Glengarry Glen Ross. As lowly analysts, Quinto and Badgley play kids


out of their depth who are struck numb when they learn the truth. Paul Bettany is icily nasty as a mid- dle manager accustomed to kicking down the chain of command. Spacey, who runs the trading opera- tion, is a salesman who has been kicked upstairs. He can barely read a financial chart; nor can CEO


Irons, whose aloofness extends to an unfeeling indifference towards victims of the firm’s sell-off. Demi Moore is credible enough as a vain upper- management cog. Meanwhile, cinematographer Frank DeMarco sharpens the tension with a sterile-grey office pal- ette. Costume designer Caroline Duncan dresses the lavishly paid bankers in clothes which con- trast with their new vulnerability. Simon Baker, as another exec, could be a model


for corporate attire. At the proper angle, he is also a younger, more dapper version of Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase. A face-to-face poster is only one of the promotional opportunities. This well-told story has some false notes. Opera


blares as the camera slowly enters the office of one trader who seems to have died in his chair. Irons as the aesthete robber baron who sips Bordeaux at an early lunch after the smoke clears is more mythic than realistic. As the whistle-blower who tells young col- leagues the bank exploited volatile investments, Tucci is the film’s saint — to be fair, every screen financial meltdown seems to have at least one. Spacey’s head trader is another candidate for beat- itude in his parallel vigil for a dying dog. Still, those flaws could be turned into market-


ing assets. You can just imagine a talk-show host’s late-night comment: “They found two honest people on Wall Street — and they both turned out to be actors.”


SCREEN SCORE ★★★


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