Chciwość

A precise piece of work that shows clearly why this can’t work... because of people. Great actors, almost everybody enjoys their role to the maximum. Emotions bubble away, hidden in their faces and gestures, while everything around is very quiet. It’s just money. It’s made up. Pieces of paper with pictures on it, so we don't have to kill each other just to get something to eat. (19.01.2012)

I wonder what I was expecting. A group of financiers portrayed by great actors show humanity at its worst, unfortunately in a somehow boring story, which is not salvaged even by the best monologue of the film, which Jeremy Irons delivers in the end. And they say that recession is a natural part of the economy… :-) (30.07.2019)

Costa Gavras or Oliver Stone effectively and indiscreetly criticized capitalism, in the style of the ruthless and unscrupulous businessmen that they go after. On the other hand, Margin Call is an intimate and factual film, with more of a television appearance, taking place in the environment of several rooms of a wealthy brokerage company. Its management must deal with unfavorable news from an analyst, who was the first to reveal that the years-long stock market party is coming to an end. The managers must quickly find a way out of the hopeless situation, and it is quite clear that they will do anything to shift the losses onto someone else. The human aspect of dealing with the loss of previous certainties and fear of responsibility for failure is just as interesting as the social-critical aspect (the shocking level of managerial salaries and bonuses, and the cynical pragmatism of those willing to sell "valuable" securities with zero value). The film goes back to the very beginning of the economic crisis in 2008 and shows the last hours before the mass selloff and panic on the stock market. Margin Call does not present a new theme, but it works with it in a civil, convincing, and effective way. Overall impression: 90%. (01.09.2015)

A disturbing insight into the pragmatic face of capitalism, when it gets tough, it climbs over the people to get what it wants. And it is precisely this pragmatic coldness in the approach to the unsolvable problem, when it is purely about whether (not) to be the first to run out the door of supposed prosperity and trigger panic affecting the whole (not only) financial world, which is the most impressive. It could have been full of fiery declarations, raised voices, growls, slamming the door and throwing things (and with such a good cast it would probably have worked anyway), but it does not work, because that's not how the things are done. In this, the cold corporate culture is captured very accurately. Which doesn't mean it's emotionless. Emotions are clearly felt beneath the surface and create inner tension between the individual wonderfully written and played characters. And it is the "moral" side of them which everything is based on. Yes, it's basically a "only" theater intimate performance of a few actors gossiping one night over a desk/computer/ coffee about business, but it's about how good the "mere" theater intimate performance is. And this one is damn good, understandable even to a complete layman in financial matters (because it's mainly about the characters) and, above all, excellently written. (04.01.2016)

The opposite of Wall Street 2, which was made at a similar time and as a result is compared to Margin Call. Stone's overall concept is surprisingly more mainstream and more gripping and rhetorically simpler for the viewer. Margin Call may seem like a movie about boring office small talk with dull suits locked in a reinforced concrete coffin, where none of them are as cool as Michael Douglas getting worked up. That might be true, but Margin Call goes in a different direction. It's cold, detached, corporate, and in most situations portrays exactly what happens to real people in the real world every moment. It is therefore somewhere else in terms of narrative value, but cinematically it keeps its feet on the ground. (11.11.2019)