14. MOVIE REVIEW

MOVIE REVIEW

Directed by: Curtis Hanson Distributed by: HBO Release date: May 23, 2011 Running time: 98 minutes Country: United States of America Language: English

SUMMARY

It cannot be easy to create a financial thriller. It is very challenging to create excitement when most of the action includes middle-aged men in conservative suits talking on the phone. The film “Too Big to Fail,” which is based on the book of the same name by the reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin of The New York Times, about the financial crisis of 2008, uses every cinematic trick in the book, but ultimately succeeds because of the knowledge that the event was indeed dangerous. Some of the financial companies are so big and so embedded in the system that pulling them out of the system could lead to the collapse of the entire system. Such firms are termed Too Big to Fail. Many economists believe that if these firms start to feel that they will be insulated against fluctuations of the market, then they will not self-regulate and always resist any outside attempts to do so. The film revolves around the situation and the subsequence bailout of these so-called Too Big to Fail firms during the 2008 crisis. The film is a hybrid between a mystery, drama, and a documentary. The film focuses on Treasury Secretary Paulson and his personal interaction with the other characters—The Chairman of Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke, The New York Federal Reserve President Timothy Geithner, assorted bank presidents, and other financial movers and shakers. The major undertone throughout the film revolved around the perspective that the financial sector which caused the crisis was then called upon to fix it. They did manage to successfully pull out of it, albeit at a very high cost, and that too to the taxpayers. The collapse of the economy into a total economic depression was avoided, but the banks got even bigger through forced mergers, thus aggregating risks. These banks now stood on the foundations of the capital infused by the government, which they used to revert their levels of earning to the pre-crisis era and even higher. ‘Too Big to Fail’ showcases the 2008 financial breakdown, focusing primarily on the actions of U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and The Chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke, to handle the situation during the period of August to October in the year 2008. The film revolves around how the men and women in power dealt with the impending crisis in 2008 and how the size of the institutions that faced imminent breakdown became a huge threat to the financial system, or so the top echelon thought. This movie takes the viewer through the journey of these people and will help the viewers understand the finer details of the incidents that happened and how the situation was salvaged in terms of finance. The movie does include

jargon that might require some basic knowledge of finance, but all in all, it inculcates the gravity of the situation and how financial instruments, when not used responsibly, can lead to an event that would shake the entire global financial system.