THEY DIDN'T DROP THE BALL. THEY DROPPED THE BALL, KICKED THE COACH IN THE NUTS, AND TOOK A CRAP IN THE QUARTERBACK'S MOUTH: My open and notorious biases towards Curtis Hanson's book adaptations notwithstanding, I thought Too Big To Fail was a hell of a good attempt to tell the story it tried to tell.
It was, as Matt Zoller Seitz writes, an expert combination of explanatory narrative with more than a soupçon of "wealth porn". This is the story of the Serious Men Who Saved The World, which is the story Andrew Ross Sorkin told in his book of the same name (and yes, that was him as the press conference reporter), and if it didn't get sufficiently into the irony these are also largely the people who caused the mess, or explore alternate paths the crisis could have taken ... well, neither did the author. But if you want to see a movie in which TARP is sold as the least-bad--but-absolutely-necessary-option and the trio of Paulson, Bernanke and Geithner are portrayed as hard-working, noble pragmatists who did their best -- played by the not-bright-enough anchor from Broadcast News, Pig Vomit, and Stillwater's Russell Hammond -- this movie tells that story well, and whether it's the proper story to be told (as opposed to something more darkly comic, or tragic) is left for the history books -- or your comments.
Things I particularly liked: James Woods's Dick Fuld and Dan Hedaya's cameo-level appearance as Barney Frank; the big explanatory scene on credit default swaps; the explanatory parade of bankers before the big meeting at the NYC Fed; William Hurt's various stages of stubble; and that they kept in the Warren Buffett at Dairy Queen scene, because it really happened like that. (Berkshire Hathaway does own Dairy Queen, FWIW.)
How jazzed has Timothy Geitner have to be that he got Billy Crudup playing him!
ReplyDeleteNever read the book, but did watch the movie...and thought is was, generall, comically bad. Particulalrly the last ~40 minutes-- this, of course, coincides with the selling of TARP and a rush to reach some kind of conclusion. And the conclusion was a let down...we passed TARP, only, according the ending bumpers, it didn't work. So...the point was?
ReplyDelete<span>So...the point was?</span>
ReplyDeleteMust...resist...urge...to politicize...
It hit a bit too close to home, but I enjoyed it immensely. (Also, it's Dick Fuld, not Ken.)
ReplyDeletecorrected.
ReplyDeleteWell, yeah, that's the problem with opening up the discussion. It's like Thirteen Days but with Kevin Costner's "Boston" accent replaced by Tony Shalhoub going Southern, and it's easier in this forum to discuss "how well did it tell the story it wanted to tell" rather than "was THIS the version of the story worth telling."
ReplyDeleteI think that if we can be civil about it -- and we can -- we can get into that second question a little.
I'm likely coloring this with my own political preferences, and the book tends to avoid finger pointing so that Sorkin wouldn't burn/piss off any of the sources, but my read from the book was that the government failed by declining to get more involved in managing/dealing with Lehman--had the government taken a more active role, panic could have been limited. Don't know where the movie's version of the story comes down.
ReplyDeleteCrisp, with diaologue delivered at an (Aaron) Sorkinian clip, very entertaining. Thought the explanation of Credit Default swaps unnecessarily didactic. But necessary. Weren't Hurt ad Grace great?
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the movie, mostly as an "Oh, that's what Matthew Modine looks like now" exercise. I thought it told the story in a compelling way, but it didn't tell me any more than what I learned from listening to a couple of excellent "This American Life" episodes. I liked William Hurt as the conflicted Paulson and Bill Pullman as the slick Jaime Dimon.
ReplyDelete