There are three ways to make a living in this business: be first,
be smarter, or cheat.

John Tuld, CEO

“Margin Call”

“Margin Call” suffered the same fate as many good movies before and after it - being almost completely overlooked by the general public, busily preoccupied with the latest primitive cheesy popcorn blockbuster.

At first, it seemed unfair, but after giving it some thought I realized that it was not something new; after all, as the Teacher had famously said in Ecclesiastes “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.“

For those tired of painfully experiencing the fussing around cartoonish “Avengers”, for those, exhausted from slowly suffering through the endless boring “Hunger games”, “Margin Call” offers something different – flawed, very far from perfect, but still closer to the realm of art than your average Hollywood mass production.

The main character in “Margin Call” is not a person, but rather a very interesting and an intriguing social and cultural phenomenon: Wall Street. Wall Street is a well-established and valuable brand in popular culture. Not surprisingly therefore, over the years, Hollywoodhas made several noteworthy attempts to do what it does best: milk the “Wall Street” brand and turn it into a cash cow. 

Fortunately, one of the best and unique qualities of the movie is its freshness, its peculiar, almost naive innocence, and sincerity, possibly explained by the fact that “Margin Call” is a debut work of its writer-director J.C. Chandor.

Not only does the movie not have any apparent hidden agenda, but it also does not look like its author was too much into a greedy moneymaking or a narcissistic awards gathering. Instead, J.C. Chandor was indeed attempting to focus on something truly important, to take an entertaining enough, but still long, hard, comprehensive and honest look at the various Wall Street characters in the times of crisis - from lowly financial analysts to powerful CEOs.

Was that attempt successful? Yes and no. On one hand, “Margin Call” is definitely an interesting movie that is worth checking out. It is for the most part entertaining, intriguing, suspenseful, and even gripping thriller with a meaningful subject.

On the other hand, however, the movie has several significant flaws, and the source of most of its flaws as it often happens is the same as the source of the most of its virtues – the writer-director being a relative novice in the profession and in Hollywood in particular.

The questionable editing additionally worsens the uneven writing and directing of “Margin Call”. As a result, here and there the smart and original scenes randomly and unexpectedly alternate the ones that are clichéd, boring, unnecessary or lead nowhere.

Moreover, “Margin Call” bears a touch of an unnatural bookishness. One time it would clumsily put the author’s reflections in a character’s mouth, the other time it would explicitly reveal the deep motivations of a character or would make the characters expose their inner thoughts, yet other time it would feature some other intimate details that in a real life conversation would remain implied and unspoken.

Some of the characters in the movie seem to be less authentic than others. For example, the character of Sam Rogers – the head of trading - does not come across as a particularly realistic and coherent. The author noticeably tried to create something complex, deep and credible with such an underwhelming result that even Kevin Spacey was mostly helpless in reviving the stillborn image.

The smart story evidently attracted many good actors that star in the movie - already mentioned Kevin Spacey as well as Jeremy Irons, Simon Baker, Demi Moore, Stanley Tucci, Paul Bettany, Zachary Quinto.

Yet it almost looked like due to a lack of experience the novice director failed to make all these stars work in harmony with each other, to create an integrated ensemble from a group of very talented but very different individuals with unique personalities.

As a result, we notice some discord, dissonance, lack of cohesion in the acting. My personal favorite is a reserved, but expressive and powerful performance of Simon Baker as a firm division head. Demi Moore was surprisingly good in the role of the chief risk management officer and Stanley Tucci was great as usual in the role of her subordinate.

I felt that venerable Jeremy Irons went slightly over the top in his showy and charismatic portrayal of John Tuld - the CEO of the respectable Wall Street firm. He ended up being almost more charismatic than the late Steve Jobs himself.  Personally, I truly enjoyed the Jeremy Irons’ captivating performance, but real life CEOs are probably more boring and much less fun to watch. 

Zachary Quinto, in my opinion, was a miscasting for the role of a junior risk. He applied every effort to create a believable character, but all in vain. I could be wrong, but it almost looked like the movie subject turned out to be a little foreign to him and he ended up being somewhatlost in it.

I cannot help but mention something that irritated and upset me personally – the outrageous pervasive profanity. Some fragments of the film are better in that respect than the others, but at certain times, when “f-word” is spoken in almost every sentence “Margin Call” can become utterly disgusting and almost completely intolerable.

Being unfamiliar with the life, customs, and manners of Wall Street traders, I cannot say whether this aspect of the movie is true to life or not. However, even this is how they truly behave, filling so liberally the otherwise intelligent movie with such a strong profanity does not seem justifiable or acceptable to me.

Finally, even though J.C. Chandor undoubtedly has a significant knowledge of the subject and a genuine interest in it, it does not appear that he has ever actually worked in the field. Without being an insider, he could only mostly speculate regarding the feelings, views, motivations, and behaviors of the characters.

Therefore, while being based on a true story, “Margin Call” remains a speculation, albeit a smart and a talented one, and quite possibly fairly true to life.