MARGIN CALL – The Review

MARGIN CALL is a complex ensemble drama, a timely greed-culture morality play taking place within a 24 hour period at a major financial firm. It’s an interesting look at how and why cut-throat traders allowed a catastrophic financial event to take place right under their noses. MARGIN CALL is a good film that stays on message and doesn’t get distracted with subplots and romance but its energy level doesn’t quite match that of the world in which it’s set. MARGIN CALL opens with an unnamed, high-powered brokerage firm laying off a substantial percentage of its staff including Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci), the head of their risk management department. As he’s shown the door, he tries to explain that a major meltdown is in the cards but his pleas fall on deaf ears (and they’ve killed his phone). Before leaving, he hands incriminating data over to his second-in-command Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto) and tells him to be careful. After crunching the numbers on the file he’s just been handed, Peter concludes the firm is about to take a devastating, company-killing loss from assets they’re holding. He alerts his boss Will Emerson (Paul Bettany), who alerts his boss Sam Rogers (Kevin Spacey), who alerts his boss Jared Cohen (Simon Baker) until finally top dog John Tuld (Jeremy Irons) lands his helicopter on the roof and declares, “dump it all”, selling off the firm’s holdings knowing full well that it will start a national panic. But, as Rogers justifies it, “It’s not a panic when you’re the first one out the door”.

MARGIN CALL is an intelligently written film, working both as an effective thriller and as an abstract charting of the dark corridors of corruption and power but the script is never as involving as it thinks it is and in the end it doesn’t add up to a very satisfying movie experience. While I can’t vouch for the verisimilitude of the movie’s setting, it feels plausible. The attention to detail allows MARGIN CALL to achieve the same sort of insight into stock brokering that GLENGARRY GLENN ROSS offered into sales, but despite all of the Mamet-lite anger and vulgarity, the film drags and isn’t much fun. There’s a familiarity to the attitudes and ideas encountered here. Once we’ve seen Peter gaze in horror at the file he’s opened on his computer, we understand the movie’s method. We see the crisis control cycle repeated several more times as the story grows longer and the inevitability more clear. First time writer-director J.C. Chandor does a good job making this dialog-heavy film as cinematic as possible but for all of its technical skill, the movie essentially shows us the same process several times as it leads closer and closer to an end we already know Is coming. Most movies about con artists let us revel in the thrill of the scam. It’s a double-edged pleasure: Even as we share the hustler’s amoral cleverness, we take delight in laughing at the putz he has just conned, knowing full well it could have been us. But there’s no villain or cover-up or crime in MARGIN CALL. The company somehow messed up a financial formula, hastening the real-life market collapse, and the movie becomes a story about covering one’s butt.

While much of the writing is sharp, it can’t compensate for the weak performance by Zachary Quinto at the center of MARGIN CALL. There’s a lot going on in terms of morals and alliances and the actor is a blank. Failing to register where he stands ethically or where his loyalties lie, Quinto acts like he’s still playing Spock. I understand he’s conflicted and playing his cards close to his vest, but the actor lacks presence and charisma and being surrounded by the likes of Spacey and Irons doesn’t help. The two Oscar winners are outstanding yet I wish there had been more good lines for them to sink their teeth into. I would have liked to have seen more of Irons and this seems like the type of character Spacey has played one too many times before. A dour Demi Moore in a small role barely makes an impression. I liked MARGIN CALL well enough to recommend it but wish it had been a faster and funnier look at a world where ”greed is good” has become the only reality in town.

3 of 5 Stars