Review
Culture
TERRY GROSS, host: The new film "Margin Call" chronicles 24 hours in the life of a fictional investment firm on the eve of the financial crash of 2008. It stars Kevin Spacey, Zachary Quinto and Jeremy Irons. Film critic David Edelstein has a review.
DAVID EDELSTEIN: The timing is almost too good: a terrific Wall Street melodrama at the moment the Occupy Wall Street protests are building. We haven't seen the like since Three Mile Island had a near-meltdown a couple of days after "The China Syndrome" exploded into theaters. Now, "Margin Call" seems anything but marginal.
The movie opens with a chilling vision: Layoff specialists march onto a floor of a mighty New York financial firm and give various employees the bad news - among them risk-management whiz Eric Dale, played by Stanley Tucci, a peerless character actor who signals more emotion by clenching and unclenching his jaw than performers who weep and moan.
The boss on the floor is Sam Rogers, played by Kevin Spacey. Called on to give a pep talk, he emerges from his office, stone-faced, and tells his remaining employees to forget about their laid-off comrades. You guys, he says, have survived the purge. You're the winners.
These aren't sympathetic people, yet writer-director J.C. Chandor does build some sympathy. He frames the action as if this were a disaster picture like "Earthquake" or "The Towering Inferno." At times, we find ourselves rooting for the firm's survival, despite the fact that its executives are actively promoting worthless assets.
Partly, that's because we like Peter Sullivan, the risk-management underling played by Zachary Quinto, who figures out what's coming and calls his half-drunk boss, played by Paul Bettany, who calls his boss, who calls his. We follow Sullivan - who's a former rocket scientist, and the only person who can explain what's happening - up the corporate ladder one rung at a time, until he finally arrives at the big man, played by Jeremy Irons, who lands at 2 a.m. on the building's roof, in a helicopter.
What precisely is happening to the firm's finances? It's too byzantine for most of the executives to figure out, let alone a movie critic. But to a person, they look at Sullivan's graph and are instantly spooked by the prospect of complete economic conflagration. They'll be left holding obviously toxic assets, unless they act fast.
"Margin Call" has a moral center, of a sort. Spacey's Rogers turns out to be cold, but not sociopathic, and there's a line he is loath to cross: a fire sale of said assets dumped on unsuspecting customers, many of whom will go bust.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "MARGIN CALL")
KEVIN SPACEY: (as Sam Rogers) The real question is: Who are we selling this to?
JEREMY IRONS: (as John Tuld) Same people we've been selling it to the last two years, and whoever else will buy it.
SPACEY: (as Sam Roger) But John, if you do this, you will kill the market for years. It's over. And you're selling something that you know has no value.
IRONS: (as John Tuld) We are selling to willing buyers of the current fair market price, so that we may survive.
SPACEY: (as Sam Rogers) You will never sell anything to any of those people ever again.
IRONS: (as John Tuld) I understand.
SPACEY: (as Sam Rogers) Do you?
IRONS: (as John Tuld) Do you? This is it. I'm telling you, this is it.
EDELSTEIN: Spacey gives a major performance, his best in a decade. And Zachary Quinto, known mostly for being the new Mr. Spock, has a very un-Vulcan vulnerability. Simon Baker is deliciously repellent as the least shamefaced master of the universe, and Demi Moore, as the lone female top executive, underplays and gives the performance of her life. She's a woman who's given up everything to rise so high, and knows she'll be first in line to take the fall. Although Irons is a little too Boris Karloff-creepy for my taste, the tender way he drops the hammer on Demi will haunt my dreams for a long time.
"Margin Call" is a different sort of big-business film than its best-known predecessor, Oliver Stone's "Wall Street." Stone wanted to create a capitalist demon in Gordon Gekko, but ended up making him so charismatic, he became a role model. Despite the amounts of money bandied about, there's nothing in "Margin Call" to inspire anyone - except, of course, those fervent Wall Street occupiers.
GROSS: David Edelstein is film critic for New York magazine. You can see clips from "Margin Call" on our website, freshair.npr.org, where you can also download podcasts of our show. And you can join us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @nprfreshair.
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