The Big Short Review

Selling Itself Short

♦ Tripwire sent editor-in-chief Joel Meadows to review Adam Mckay’s award nominated The Big Short, out at cinemas in the UK from 22 January and starring Christian Bale and Steve Carell

The Big Short

Director: Adam McKay

Stars: Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Brad Pitt

The Big Short tells a story that does need to be told, about how the banks basically took many members of the American public to the cleaners and how a number of savvy financial figures predicted the crash we suffered back in 2008. However for me, the film doesn’t work. Bale is finance nerd Michael Burry, who saw how the practices of the huge financial institutions in the US would lead to the market collapse while Carell is Mark Baum, a man who has switched sides from working for the financial wolves at the heart of the crisis to trying to fight for those who were conned by the banks. McKay and Charles Randolph have tried to put a human face on what is a massive and complex subject and unfortunately The Big Short has two major flaws which prevent it from serving its function: the first is that the presence of Carell, who really has no range at all and should stick to painfully unfunny Hollywood comedies, and Bale, whose kooky financial whizkid gets very grating very fast, only serves to trivalise and undermine the core thrust of the film. The presence of Brad Pitt also feels rather shoehorned in here as well. The second problem is that, despite a couple of humourous cameos from chef Antony Bourdain and hot actress of the moment Margot Robbie (Suicide Squad), it is unclear at least to this film reviewer, what the banks actually did to precipitate the worldwide crisis. I haven’t read the book but I got the feeling that The Big Short may have worked better as a documentary. Its heart was in the right place but I left the cinema not really knowing much more than I did when I went in.

JOEL MEADOWS

The Big Short www.tripwiremagazine.com