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Rating:
[Contains spoilers]
If it had ended halfway through, I would have talked about an excellent film. The biggest problem is the almost irritating difference between the first and the second half. The merits of the first turn into the flaws of the second, with an incredibly inconsistent shift in style. The technical issues related to the famous financial crisis of 2007-2008 are meticulously explained in the first half, and this is one of the film's most positive notes.
The director really unfolds a lot of creativity to explain to the audience what is being talked about; McKay manages to make us absorb some lectures on finance without making the film heavy and unbearable. He uses metaphors and has them explained by famous people in particular situations (Margot Robbie, Selena Gomez, and others); or uses overlays to make things simpler for the non-experts. In short, the subject is challenging, but it is well untangled.
However, the director must have thought that after the initial introduction, the viewer would become some sort of sector expert, because in the second half he stops guiding them hand-in-hand, resulting in several passages that remain really hard to understand. After the didactic effort of the first hour of the film, was it so problematic to continue to insert brief notes in conjunction with some slightly complex passages? I don't think so, and anyway, this inconsistency in approach between the two halves of the film makes no sense. A director needs to have his ideal audience in mind: if his idea was to speak to those who are not experts in finance, he should have always kept the same educational line aimed at simplifying. Otherwise, if he intended to make a discourse for insiders, all the rich initial explanations are inexplicable. Mind you, in the end, it's more or less clear how things go and that all the protagonists profit, but further explanations on the different ways they do it wouldn't have hurt. For example, it's unclear how much the two young men bet on the AA tranches.
Also, in the first part, the film presents itself quite well from the point of view of the protagonists: there's a metalhead financial genius Christian Bale, a misanthropic Steve Carell, a greedy Ryan Gosling, and a Brad Pitt turned farmer financial agent. In a film that explains finance, introducing such well-characterized characters wasn't easy. But again, McKay shows his limits as time goes on. The basic characteristics of the characters are not gradually developed but rather serve more as fixed distinctive elements: thus, almost every time Bale appears on the scene, a Metallica, Mastodon, or other metal groups' song starts. Moreover, some elements are explained with excessive emphasis: we understand that Steve Carell's brother committed suicide; there's no need to show him on top of a building. Similarly, for the two young men: it's clear they don't really know what they're doing; there's no need to insist.
There are elements of comedy that lighten things just enough; the film almost doesn't seem to be talking about a tragedy in the first part. Or rather, it talks about an impending tragedy from the coolly ruthless perspective of those who want to profit from it. But even here, McKay doesn't dare to maintain consistency and the caustic style gives way to seriousness as the crisis becomes real. Exemplary, in a negative sense, is Brad Pitt's preaching to the two young men: their gain will mean misery for millions. Yes, it's true, but putting it like that only spoils the film's biting irony. Which is, among other things, ruthless on certain other matters: financial frauds are denounced with scathing irony.
In short, definitely a film that in several aspects knows how to bring freshness to one of the most heavy and difficult subjects ever; unfortunately, McKay, especially in the role of screenwriter together with Charles Randolph, does not prove up to the task until the end. It's a pity because the ideas are there: amateur-style zoomed shots, characters speaking to the audience (House of Cards style), some interesting dialogue windows between fictional plans and the real world. It remains, however, a film to see, artistically imperfect but useful for understanding an important chapter of recent history.
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