As I am sitting here writing this blog the morning after I watched The Big Short for the first time, I’m still not completely sure what was happening the entire time. That being said, I was still thoroughly entertained throughout and really enjoyed this movie.
The Big Short came out in 2015, seven years after the housing market crash of 2008 and five years after the book it is adapted from, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis. Right off the bat, I want to give credit to director Adam McKay, the cast and crew for all making this topic far more interesting and captivating than it could have been. If someone pitched to you a movie about investors shorting the US mortgage market, you wouldn’t expect it to be as entertaining, or funny, as The Big Short.
First, let’s talk about Adam McKay. He’s become a household name for his witty dramas as of late (Vice, Don’t Look Up, directed episodes of Winning Time and Succession as well), but he was a mainstay in the crude comedy world for a decade plus beforehand. He made a name for himself partnering up with Will Ferrell in both Anchorman movies, Talladega Nights and Step Brothers, and you could see his wheels starting to turn in 2010 with The Other Guys. He dabbled with storylines about investment bankers, fraud and embezzlement but still relied heavily on comedy for the movie’s backbone. The end credits of the film actually have in-depth instructions on how a Ponzi scheme works, along with corporate greed and government tolerance.
The cast of this film also needs a special shoutout, as they all played their roles to perfection. The role of Jared Vennett was written with Ryan Gosling in mind, which explains why it seems tailor-made for him. Christian Bale spent nine hours with the real-life Michael Burry to research the role, and even borrowed his actual cargo shorts and t-shirt to wear during filming. Jeremy Strong even got to warm up for his eventual role as Kendall Roy in Succession (I’ve never watched Succession but from what I know I feel like the two characters have some similarities).
My biggest complaint about the movie comes wrapped up in a compliment, which I mentioned at the beginning of this post – even with all of the hand holding, I couldn’t understand what the characters were talking about half of the time. Some people complained that the movie actually did too much hand holding, but I feel it was the perfect amount. And I know what you’re thinking, “wait, didn’t he just say he didn’t understand what they were saying?” Yes, I did. But if they tried to dumb it down any more, it would have become too distracting. They broke the fourth wall wisely, with cameo appearances from Margot Robbie, Selena Gomez and more, to explain some of the movie’s more complicated terms and concepts. If they had added any more of them, it would have interrupted the flow too much and distracted from what was actually happening. If they did it less, it would have left even more viewers confused with the jargon and feeling more and more lost as the movie proceeded. All that being said though, I still walked away feeling entertained and informed on the principals of everything that happened, but not quite grasping the nitty gritty of what a CDO truly is, or why Mark Baum waited so long to sell all their swaps.
With that in mind, let’s head to the categories!
By The Numbers
- Budget: $50 million
- Box office: $133.4 million
- Run time: 130 mins (2 hours, 10 minutes)
- Letterboxd rating: 3.8 ★
- My Letterboxd rating: 3.5 ★
- Rotten Tomatoes: 89% (Certified Fresh ?)
- Accolades – 73 total nominations, 26 total wins
- Five Academy Award nominations, one win (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film Editing)
- Four Golden Globe nominations, 0 wins (Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, Best Actor – Music or Comedy [Carell and Bale], Best Screenplay)
Best Scene
There were a couple of contenders for this category that stuck out to me, so let’s start with this one: Charlie and Jamie short the AA tranches in Vegas. This one has some of the fast editing, a mini montage, fun soundtrack, and my favorite: a gut punch. The Brownfield Fund boys celebrate making the deal of a lifetime, only for Ben Rickert to slap them in the face with reality: “If we’re right, people lose homes. People lose jobs. People lose retirement savings, people lose pensions. You know what I hate about f*ckin’ banking? It reduces people to numbers. Here’s a number – every 1% unemployment goes up, 40,000 people die, did you know that?” Oof, great stuff.
Here’s another one for ya – Jared Vennett pitches to Front Point Partners. Here we have Ryan Gosling just oozing with douchebag charisma, trying to get Mark Baum and co to join in on the fun. I love a good sales pitch that reeks of “I know more than you, but I can’t do this without you”, has visual aids, and ends up converting the sale. Plus, Anthony Bourdain makes a great cameo (RIP) that legitimately helped explain what a CDO was to me.
My final scene, which is the one I think is the best, is Mark Baum meeting with the CDO Manager from Merrill Lynch in Las Vegas. This one does such a good job of showing you just how big the ripple effect of the housing market crash would be: a global economic failure. Wrapped up with more douchebag energy from the CDO Manager, Baum’s hair progressively getting more and more like Einstein’s as the meeting progresses, and another great cameo from Richard Thaler and Selena Gomez to explain what a synthetic CDO is. It’s great stuff.
What’s Aged The Best
Well, the housing market, for one. It certainly isn’t in an ideal spot right now, but it sure ain’t in a tailspin like it was in ’07! Or wait, maybe it is, and there are people out there right now shorting the housing market again? I don’t know. The budget for this film has aged well too – it comes in at the second lowest budget for an Adam McKay directed film, behind only Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy ($26 million). My pick for what has aged the best though, is the concept of people out-smarting Wall Street. We saw it here, and we even saw it again in a very similar vein in 2021, with the GameStop short squeeze. There’s just something about people figuring out when bankers and hedge funds are falling asleep at the wheel and taking advantage of that, that just feels good.
What’s Aged the Worst
I can’t choose between Finance Bros and Ryan Gosling’s hair1, so you decide.
The Jason Clarke Award
This one is a bit tough, because the vast majority of the cast are either too well-established by the time this movie gets made, or not well-established enough for you to recognize them. This left me with one choice (personally): Hamish Linklater. I never knew his name before this, and I couldn’t even put my finger on what I recognized him from, but I just knew I’d seen his face before. Turns out it was from his short run as Jerry Dantana on The Newsroom.
The Jack Nicholson Award
This one was easier than I thought it would be, and I knew who would win as the scene was happening. For me, Max Greenfield and Billy Magnussen are the co-winners of this award. These guys playing the overly confident, slimy, mortgage brokers in Miami couldn’t have been better cast. They’re taking advantage of people, making a ton of money off them, and bragging about it. You believe every word they say, and they’re in and out in less than four minutes.
The Roger Deakins Award
There weren’t a whole lot of contenders for this award, because it wasn’t the kind of movie that was trying to wow you with the cinematography – that came from the screenplay. Barry Ackroyd, who served as cinematographer for this film, isn’t inexperienced with giving us good shots, though. He was also cinematographer on such movies as Green Zone, United 93, The Hurt Locker, Captain Phillips and more. For me, the cinematography shines through in the final scene of the movie, where Baum finally tells Vinny to “sell it all.” You can see the heartache, worry and disgust painted all over Baum’s face as the reality sets in that he and his group are making $1 billion off the complete collapse of the US housing market. Him sitting on his rooftop terrace with the Manhattan skyline in the background before cutting to black helps wrap the whole story up in a nice bow: there were no good guys that day on Wall Street, even if they may have felt like they were.
All in all, I have enjoyed this movie the more I have sat with it since first watching it a few days ago. The performances from Bale, Carell, Pitt and Strong all allow you to fully believe everything they are feeling and saying through their characters. Adam McKay and Charles Randolph did a great job adapting the book to a screenplay, and kept me invested for 130 minutes, even if I didn’t understand the jargon half of the time. Here’s hoping we don’t get a sequel!
- To be clear, I’m referring to Ryan Gosling’s hair only in this movie. It’s one of the more unrealistic looking dye jobs I’ve seen in a long time. ↩︎
