The Big Short is directed by Adam Mckay and stars Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt and is the true story of a group of various Wall Street analysts who predict the crash of the US housing market and the collapse of the world economy. Having received universally positive reviews from critics and loved by the Academy, I was looking forward to viewing The Big Short. However, every single year there is that one "Oscar" movie that everyone else seems to love bar myself. Last year, it was Foxcatcher. This year, it's The Big Short.
Don't get me wrong I by no means hate this movie as there's definitely a lot of good things within it which I enjoyed very much. For one, Christian Bale's performance is utterly terrific, playing the one guy who predicts the financial fallout before anybody else. I thought his performance was grounded and believable, plus I enjoyed the socially awkward aspect of his character. He's definitely a strange person but the movie takes time to explain to you why he is the way he is, and it bought for some funny moments with the supporting cast. He deserves his Oscar nom in my opinion.
Also, Steve Carell once again proved the point that comedic actors can in fact be very capable dramatic actors through his rage-filled performance as a man who is just fed up with and baffled by the sheer amount of both fraud and stupidity which made up the housing market. Like Christian Bale's character, he still felt like a human being and you understood exactly why he was the way he was as the movie's screenplay again attempts to ground this man in humanity.
Brad Pitt was not in the movie for very long but I thought he did a sound job in every scene he was in. He also really delivers in what might be my favourite scene of the entire movie when he rips into the 2 young characters for celebrating betting against the world's economy to collapse. That was when The Big Short intrigued me on an emotional level, because it's all well and good going "I told you so", but the consequences of this collapse affected real people in the world. People lost their jobs, they lost their homes, and I enjoyed when the movie focused on that aspect of the story.
Along with helming this project, Adam McKay had a hand in writing the screenplay and what I will say is it does have enough humour and basic emotional intrigue to keep it at a watchable level, but I don't think I'd ever want to watch The Big Short again simply because of its irritating and imposing style of direction. Odd musical choices, weird crash zooms, purposefully off-focus and unsteady camerawork and dim lighting all were meant to come together to make The Big Short present itself like a documentary. However, my view on this is don't go out of your way to make your movie look as unprofessional as possible! Why not transfer that creative energy and just do the opposite?
McKay's writing and direction for this film was stylistically bold and I will give him credit for trying something different, however I just couldn't get behind the way this movie was directed. On top of that, there are numerous attempts at a fourth wall break which just come across as awkward and incredibly out of left field. And don't even get me started on the shoved-down-your-throat celebrity cameos this movie uses to try and get you to understand all the complicated banking jargon.
The screenplay definitely goes out of its way to dumb-down some of it and for some this will be enough. For me, while the way normal conversational dialogue is written in this film is done very well, the attempt to simplify various elements of banking jargon wasn't handled very well in my opinion; it just came across to me as clunky.
And my final issue with this movie is the character played by Ryan Gosling. He's a talented actor which he has shown in movies such as Drive and The Place Beyond the Pines, but his character in this movie is an annoying asshole I just couldn't get behind. Don't get me wrong, I got the point, it's just compared to the rest of the cast he felt aloof. As the narrator of this story, he didn't feel organic or anything like a real person. More interesting characters in the movie such as those of Bale or Carell are more enjoyable to watch as they feel like real people grounded in reality. It almost felt like Gosling didn't really need to be in the film at all.
Again I'll emphasise I don't hate this movie and I feel there is a lot of enjoyment to be had from it. I enjoyed the acting performances, the attempt to flesh out our main characters and thought it was extremely well edited. However, while I understood the artistic choices made with McKay's directorial style and the screenplay, they just didn't work for me and detracted from my enjoyment of the film. It's not terrible by any means, just personally disappointing:
Rating - C+
Thanks for reading,
Matt
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