Adam McCay's The Big Short was a rather big surprise for me as I had avoided all trailers and all I had was a general idea about its subject and the cast. So, let me tell you straight ahead: this is a film you must not miss.
The story of The Big Short is quite simple, yet the way it is presented is astonishing. Here, we have three parallel true tales of people involved in high finance who had managed to predict the housing crisis of the mid-2000s, which led to a crash that made millions of people lose their homes, their jobs and their pensions. What is more, all the banks and top financial institutions survived the crash and even got away with it. But how did we get to such an enormous and unavoidable dead-end? This is the film you have to see, whether you're interested in economics or not.
The main three people we follow are Michael Burry (Christian Bale), a fund manager who is the first to notice the rotten mortgage system, Mark Baum (Steve Carrell), a hedge fund manager who is already convinced that the system is corrupt and Ben Rickert (Brad Pitt), a former Wall Street trader who is dusgusted by the way things work and has left his job. They all see that the housing market is about to collapse so they decide to start shorting (that means betting against) subprime mortgages in order to win money. They are basically betting against the American Economy as Pitt's character says to two of his co-stars.
McCay, director of comedies such as Anchorman 1 (2004) and 2 (2013) and Stepbrothers (2008) shows his true capabilities here as he achieves to present a rather important and difficult story in a trully funny and light-hearted way, without dumbing it down one single bit. Having in his cast great actors such as Christian Bale and Steve Carrell (both of whom have been nominated for a Golden Globe for their portrayals here) as well as Ryan Gosling, Brad Pitt, Marisa Tomei and many more (there are even a few surprise guest appearances of celebrities who play themselves in some very clever sequences of the film) and bringing on the big screen one of the greatest screenplays of recent years, McCay brings in his a-game.
The Big Short tells the whole story without cutting the -otherwise- boring details but instead it emphasizes on them and it still manages to be quick, funny, thought-provoking and exceptionally educating in a rather unforced way. It makes the viewer listen to the truth, learn and care about it and if you've been paying attention by the time the film finishes you will have felt really angry at those who are to blame. Is it pedagogic? Yes, and maybe that's what we need in this era of limitless information: a film that will shake us to our core and wake us up in order for us to finally realise what trully happens in the world.
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