Margin Call

UK Release Date. 13 January 2012
Certification. 15

Running Time. 1 hour 47 mins
Director. J.C. Chandor
Cast. Penn Badgley, Simon Baker, Paul Bettany, Jeremy Irons, Demi Moore, Zachary Quinto, Kevin Spacey, Stanley Tucci.
Rating. 69%

Review.

J.C. Chandor's directorial debut, Margin Call, is a taut corporate thriller following several staff of an unnamed investment bank over a 24-hour period leading up to the stock market collapse of 2008.

The film opens with a bleak proposition - 80% of the floor will be let go today. Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci) is one of the risk managers to be let go - there and then. On the way out of the building, Dale hands a flash drive to one of his team, Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto) with the parting words, "Take a look at it. Be careful." 

When Peter interrogates the data and discovers a seismic error in the highly leveraged mortgage securities that support the company's business model it results in a chain reaction, that escalates in a 24-hour period, all the way to the company's CEO, John Tuld (Jeremy Irons). If this calculation is correct, the error could bring down the entire investment bank, and many other financial institutions besides. The next few hours turns into a long night where fresh air is in short supply as those involved come up with an acceptable strategy to mitigate the problem.

J.C. Chandor has assembled an impressive cast - Penn Badgley, Zachary Quinto and Stanley Tucci, are joined by Paul Bettany, Kevin Spacey, Demi Moore, Simon Baker, and Jeremy Irons. The stellar cast act with utter conviction and universally find every little nuance within each of their characters. 

Margin Call owes more than a debt of gratitude to Glengarry Glen Ross, and in particular David Mamet's writing. But Chandor's dialogue has none of Mamet's grandstanding. Instead, there is a coolness to the dialogue, a sort of unemotional pragmatism even when characters are discussing nuclear options to resolve the situation.

Margin Call is an intelligent film that entrusts the audience's capacity to work out for themselves what is happening, without explicit explanation. 

Whilst the film is a study of bruising machismo, rather than perhaps predictably demonising these characters amongst the insatiable desire for wealth, J.C. Chandor never lets us forget that the main protagonists involved in this story are human beings. Human beings who have largely sold their souls long ago to achieve success, but human beings nonetheless. At times, there is almost a sympathetic tone to the performances or, at the very least, a seductiveness to them, that makes you wonder at what point in their careers did money and power become such a corrupting influence.