The absorbing drama Margin Call (*** out of four) focuses on the first rumblings of the 2008 financial crisis, but unlike many movies based in the historical past, it doesn't go overboard in grand declarations or broad indictments or anything that trumpets a smug sense of 20/20 hindsight. Instead, debuting writer-director J.C. Chandor plays much of it low-key and close to the vest, so that the overwhelming feeling is one of nauseating inevitability, akin to watching a speeding car barreling toward that deer in the road and knowing there's no way the driver can stop in time.
Focusing on a fictional Wall Street investment firm, the film details how bright greenhorn Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto, the new Star Trek's Spock) takes some data handed to him by his recently laid-off boss (Stanley Tucci) and quickly figures out that the bottom is about to fall out not just for the company but for the industry as a whole. This sets in motion a series of after-hours meetings in which employees of all stripes, from the new kids on the block (Quinto and Penn Badgley) right up to ruthless CEO John Tuld (a chilling Jeremy Irons), work to save their company, forcing to make some moral decisions along the way. Of course, given these sharks, morality doesn't come into play often, but it can be spotted here and there, particularly in the character of Sam Rogers (Kevin Spacey), a trading-floor honcho who's uneasy about his role in the whole mess.
Compromised values seem to be the order of the day, since many of these characters find themselves tempering their ideals or opinions in order to simply survive on this eve of destruction. Eschewing the fairly straightforward characterizations (not to mention the slick stylistics and peacock posturing) seen in other like-minded films such as Wall Street and Boiler Room, Margin Call opts instead to show us that there are no heroes and villains, only villains and victims and poor souls weighing the merits of a Faustian bargain.
MARGIN CALL
***
DIRECTED BY J.C. Chandor
STARS Kevin Spacey, Paul Bettany
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