Margin Call - 4 smiles

“Margin Call,” by first-time writer-director J. C. Chandor, spends 24 hours in a behind-the-scenes look at the 2008 financial collapse of one of Wall Street’s biggest brokerage houses. Although it’s called ‘The Firm,’ it’s obvious that it’s similar to Bear Stearns or Lehman Brothers. Chandor’s perspective doesn’t moralize but asks the audience to be involved as the story develops and then reach a conclusion. As the movie opens, people at The Firm are being summoned into a glass-walled conference room and politely told to gather their belongings and leave. Among the victims is a risk-management executive, Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci), who, as he leaves, hands a flash drive to Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto), one of the young analysts. ‘Be careful,’ he says. Staying late that evening, working on Dale’s analysis and plugging in some of his own numbers, Sullivan quickly realizes that if the mortgage-backed securities currently on the company’s books, which are heavily leveraged, decline in value by an additional twenty-five percent, the company’s losses will be greater than its total worth.

“Margin Call” is also about corporate protocol, the hierarchy of power, and most of all, the difficulty of confronting the truth. When that happens, things become exceptionally nasty. Chandor’s father spent forty years at Merrill Lynch, which destroyed itself with excess mortgage-backed securities and, perhaps, explains why the various scenes in this movie have a ring of truth. And his exceptional script attracted a talented cast. At The Firm, Sullivan’s findings quickly work their way upward: first, to his immediate superior, Will Emerson (Paul Bettany), a decent but cynical free-spending supervisor; then to the longtime head of trading, Sam Rogers (Kevin Spacey), a lonely man who believes that The Firm does some good in the world and finds himself grieving excessively over his dying dog (note the symbolism); then to the head of risk, Sarah Robertson (Demi Moore), who warned of danger earlier, but still becomes the fall guy; then to their boss, Jared Cohen (Simon Baker), a severely controlled corporate snake; and then, at last, to the C.E.O, John Tuld (Jeremy Irons). Tuld sweeps in by helicopter, assembles everyone in the conference room at 2 a.m. and devises a desperate strategy to save The Firm: sell all of the toxic paper on the books. Spacey is exceptionally good, emerging as the closest thing the movie has to a conscience, however muddied. “Margin Call” is one of the best films to date, a fable of global financial calamity mixed with human greed and frailty. 10/21/11