Margin Call (Saturday, November 19, 2011) (102)

I'm not sure you heard, but a few years ago, there were a bunch of banks that sorta fell apart because they were over-leveraged and had too much risk for their asset base. Well, the good news is that if you somehow missed that story, Margin Call is a movie about one such bank and all the good people who work there who didn't mean to cause any harm to people and were really doing their best to stop the damage before it got out of hand.

This is an ensemble piece about the risk management department of a bank, where one of their analysts discovers that the firm is massively over-leveraged and that by the next morning could collapse the whole international banking sector. From late one afternoon until the early morning the next day, the banker people work to stem the tide of destruction that is coming.

As with most ensemble pieces, this is much more about the fact that a certain actor is in the film at all than that he or she actually does a good job acting. Kevin Spacey, Demi Moore, Stanley Tucci, Jeremy Irons, Paul Bettany, Simon Baker and Mary McDonell are just a few of the (small) stars who deliver totally pedestrian performances here. One actor who does a really great job is Zachary Quinto, who plays the young buck analyst who puts all the numbers together. He's cocky about what he knows, but humbled by the size of his revelation. He has one great scene where he's speaking to the chairman of the bank about his C.V. and his background.

I really hate ensemble movies and I also hate movies about recent events. I think we're way too close to the economic troubles of 2008-9 to have anything worthwhile to say about it. I also think such a story functions as shorthand for real storytelling, allowing very average stuff to be presented, rather than something more critical or thematically significant. Still, this movie is really not bad. It's a good movie with a clever, if precious, script and not too much room for grandstanding acting.

Stars: 2.5 of 4