Too Big to Fail

This HBO produced film gives dialog and a behind-the-scenes feel to the 2008 financial debacle so perfectly exposed in "Inside Job." The direction by Curtis Hanson is razor-clean cut, and the performances, especially by James Woods, Paul Giamatti and William Hurt underscore the irony that not one of the self-serving "public servants" has "served" one single day of jail time and continue to live their over-the-top, elegant lifestyles. The effective use of actually news footage from our 24/7 news cycle serve as a percussive soundtrack as we watch the financial worlds of your "off the Street" American citizens self destruct at the hands of the Bush administration. Thank you HBO for continuing to do what you have done so well for so many years!

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source: Too Big to Fail

Specifically, Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulsen is painted as having a great big unselfish S on his chest. I hate to parrot everyone else, but please watch "The Big Short" to see that everybody had blood on their hands. HBO had to make SOMEBODY a hero in this, a film, not a documentary, so they chose Paulsen. In their version Paulsen is the somewhat naive guy who understands economics but does not understand human greed. The mechanics of what happened are well described. The dangers of what could have happened are well described. And there are several monologues where somebody - as part of conversation in a team meeting - explains how the big banks and investment houses got into this mess and then how AIG, the bank that insures the insurers, got swept up into everything. The end of the film indicates that the big banks, with all of that fed supplied cash, just parked it and refused to loan it out - they were not required to do so - and the economy went into a downward spiral with hundreds of thousands losing their jobs and mortgage foreclosure becoming an epidemic. I'd say the film is OK for grasping the basic mechanics of what went on, but understand it is a film and there has to be at least one hero - false or true - even if HBO is the producer and not Disney.

You can look at a movie like this two ways: as an accurate representation of the source and as a piece of drama. Too Big To Fail is not too big to fail on both counts. I should have known to expect with a cast that sports the likes of Ed Asner, but the degree of the left-wing Hollywood spin that they put on the story was stilling annoying. They just can't let go of a chance push their ant-business agenda, even if it means inventing new scenes and even directly contradicting the source book itself. Talking about painting the lilly! Exhibit #1: There was an invented scene about 2/3 of the way through the film apparently designed to explain the roots of the calamity. They throw around terms like CDO and CDS so fast that anyone unfamiliar with the book and the background to the financial crisis would have no clue what they were talking about. They then whitewash the home owners as victims, just poor dupes swindled by the unethical mortgage brokers. In reality, of course, many of these were greedy people living way beyond their means using their houses as piggy banks while many others were pure speculators. We don't hear anything blame about the likes of left wing heroes Barney Frank and Charles Shumer who lit the fuse on the whole mess by demanding that banks make mortgages available to the poor. There is not a word about the Quants whose unrealistic risk models told bankers that such a disaster could never happen. We don't hear about the corruption of the ratings agencies, collapse of the carry trade, etc. No, there is only room for one villain in the Hollywood left villain pantheon – big business CEO's. Exhibit #2: The ending is another invented scene that is thoroughly misleading. They have Paulson pleading that he hopes that the banks will lend out the TARP money as intended to stimulate the economy. Then there is a prologue saying that the banks didn't. This is pure rubbish. In the book, Sorkin makes it perfectly clear that this was not the purpose of TARP. It was to stabilize the financial world by injecting capital to deleverage the banks and to rebuild investor confidence. The banks could not lend money because it would push their leverage back up. But Hollywood isn't interested in what Sorkin said, if they can take another parting potshot at big business. Leftwing distortions aside, Too Big To Fail was simply very dull. For a while, it is amusing to see actors who look so much like their real-life counterparts, especially Paul Giamati as a Ben Bernanke clone and Evan Handler's amazing resemblance to Lloyd Blankfeld. But the characters are uniformly dull. Even scene that should be great theater (e. g., Paulson kneeling before Nancy Pelosi) come across a dead and perfunctory. The only breaking in the dullness is James Woods' way over the top portrayal of Dick Fuld. It bordered on comic relief. The book just didn't work as a movie. The book was a series of vignettes, whose complexity reflected the complexity of the actual crisis. The story lurches from vignette to vignette with not real plot or story developing. Further, the need to boil the book down into typical movie running time also meant that they drastically has to simply and shorten many of the events to the point of losing the real story. The collapse was not the kind of linear event that works on the screen. In sum, the movie fails as both history and as drama. A much better movie about the financial disaster could have been made from Michael Lewis's highly entertaining "The Big Short," that amusingly tells the story from the viewpoint of a few quirky Wall Street outsiders who saw the collapse coming and the problems that they encountered by running contrary to popular wisdom. It's the same story, but a lot more fun. But there would have been some sympathetic businessmen characters. The Hollywood lefties wouldn't want that.

I agree with many about the ease of understanding, especially when TOPHER GRACE w/ Hurt & Crudup simplify it for Cynthia Nixon (a proxy for us, the American people). Though very strong almost throughout the film, the acting and dialog/banter in this scene is well worth the film's viewing! There is one more glaring omission/defect in the film, besides Goldman-Sachs larger role; writer Andrew Sorkin and director Chris Hansen leave out the (can't call it criminal, can we?) banking oversight roles of Sen. Chris Dodd & Rep. Barney Frank have in the disaster? The film almost depicts them (w/ Spkr Pelosi) as naive heroes! What were Sorkin and Hansen thinking? Hello - CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS and SWEETHEART DEALS to look the other way? Oh sorry, there was no quid-pro-quo... Anyone else want that beach-front property in Utah?

This movie is good--one of the best on the financial crisis other than Inside Job. It goes into many of the most interesting details and decisions of the crisis while staying entertaining. My problem with the film is that it makes it look like the politicians and CEOs involved in the decisions actually cared and got emotional about them. In reality, that is not the case. The decisions which greatly affected the lives of millions of Americans had little, if any, effect on the people who made them--hence the distinguishable apathy in their public appearances. These men and women are among the richest in the world, and they knew they would stay that way regardless of how the crisis played out. They cared about the crisis only to the extent that they needed not be late for their dinner dates. All animals are equal But some animals are more equal than others.

"Too Big to Fail" addresses the subject of modern-day mega corporations whose failure, however deserving, might be of such catastrophic dimensions that it must be avoided, if at all possible, whatever the cost. The subject matter, the US financial crisis of 2008, is profound and enormous, in terms of its shock at the time and continuing consequences, to trivialize. The main characters – William Hurt, Paul Giamatti, for instance – become aware of the distinct possibility of spiraling into a 21st century version of The Great Depression. We are awestruck by such a possibility. The plot forces at work are both economic and political, both having profound influences. Politics? As usual, it is the Art of the Possible. Economics? A very difficult-to-comprehend arena, neither art nor science. The story leads us, step by step, as numerous characters play their role on this stage. The message: How could they have been so stupid? The filmmakers have hit the nail on the head.