A Marginal Movie

I just watched a new movie that was buzzed about a fair bit during its limited theatrical run earlier this year. Margin Call is a new entry in the growing list of movies about the banking collapse a few years back. Unlike Too Big to Fail (dramatized non-fiction) or Inside Job (a documentary), Margin Call goes the route of fiction. It's still very clearly grounded in reality, but unfolds at a fictitious company and concerns fictitious characters.

But the movie is so steeped in reality, in fact, that it's actually too thin on exposition. That's not a criticism I thought I'd ever level at a movie, but the truth is, the story is a bit hard to follow at times. At least one of those other two movies I mentioned earlier feels like prerequisite viewing for this film. It's not really enough to know "the banks almost collapsed" to really understand what's going on in this movie; you have to actually know some background details about the "why" of it. There's a scene or two in Margin Call that rapidly pays lip service to this information, but they're brisk and dense. The script doesn't want to shirk reality by having characters too carefully explain information to each other that they would already know, just for the benefit of the audience.

Another troubling aspect of the narrative is that that its hard to be sympathetic to any of the characters. There are a few Cassandra-type soothsayers who predicted the problem, but essentially we're watching people who caused the problem. Or certainly helped accelerate it, in any case. There's really not a single person to root for here, nor is anyone built up as an anti-hero you could enjoy in another sense.

But the movie does have a lot going for it, in the form of a tremendous cast. The list of great actors in here seems impossibly long, and each is better than the one before. Stanley Tucci, Simon Baker, Paul Bettany, Zachary Quinto, Mary McDonnell, Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons. Even actors I wouldn't normally associate with greatness -- Penn Badgley and Demi Moore -- are lifted to a higher standard by being in such elite company. And the truly amazing thing about the cast as a whole is that there's very little scenery chewing, shouting, histrionics. The vocal landscape of the film is tight and soft -- almost British in sensibility -- but the emotions and stakes still come through crystal clear. Truly excellent work all around.

If you're a fan of the craft of acting, you owe it to yourself to check this film out. If performances aren't what make a movie for you, well, then I'd advise more caution. The movie overall is good but not great. I'd rate it a B-.