I enjoyed Big Short more than I was expecting. Director Adam McKay is known for making comedies, the Anchorman movies are what international audiences would recognise him for, and has not tackled a 'serious' movie like this before. But the producers chose wisely in giving him the director's chair and the chance to add his spin to Charles Randolph's screenplay. There was every chance that an investigation of the sub-prime mortgage crisis, while important, could be painfully dry, dull and difficult to comprehend… and The Big Short is none of those.
Just as Kubrick realised that the only way to approach a film about nuclear holocaust was to present it as a comedy (when we laugh, our mental guards are down and we are more receptive to difficult or challenging ideas), so McKay's secret was to film the economic breakdown as a jet-black comedy thriller. Of course, McKay doesn't stop there: [SPOILERS!] having Ryan Gosling's character break the fourth wall, backed by celebrity jargon busting (yeh, you had me at Margot Robbie in a bubble bath), is the icing on the cake. Indeed, McKay very nearly has his cake and eats it with gusto.
Steve Carell backs up his Foxcatcher performance with a turn that could easily have fallen into comedy OCD, but his Mark Baum has a rage that effectively acts as the audience's moral compass. Notwithstanding that his indignation may mean he's adopting the right mindset for the wrong reasons, Baum gives the audience a regular and biting reminder that while we are effectively rooting for the main characters to make their millions by betting on the US economy collapsing, those main characters are not true heroes, their victories entirely pyrrhic within a global context, and that the collapse had so many real victims. Carell's Baum is the only character that we get under the skin of.
Produced by Brad Pitt's Plan B production arm, Pitt takes the smallest and least showy of roles on offer as a former City slicker. It's not the cleanest role (as in 12 Years A Slave where he played one of only two good white men in the film), there being some unexplored moral complexity here, his reasoning for helping two greenhorn would-be City traders make their millions frustratingly obscure.
Christian Bale as the sage hedge fund manager who spots the fault-line in the US economy is a little too predictably Christian Bale, just a little too Asperger's. It might be an honest recreation of the reality, but in a challenging film that still asks something of the audience's grey matter, Bale's performance feels a little off-key.
Gosling has more dialogue than he's had of late: it's almost a surprise to hear him speak. Nevertheless, his character is largely unexplored and asks little of his talent.
The Big Short is exceptionally well edited, by Hank Corwin (he's up for both the Bafta and the Oscar), giving the film a vital spring in its step, but he can't quite overcome the minor ebbing of energy as the tone shifts from black comedy to tragedy in the final act. Aiding that springing step is Barry Ackroyd's cinematography, although it's not the best work of his career.
Music choices throughout are spot-on, particularly towards the end with the [SPOILERS!] Brazil-style happy ending being scored to the electric version of Neil Young's Rockin' In The Free World, and the credit sting getting the Led out with the all-too-appropriate When The Levee Breaks.
The Big Short does a have a few issues then, but they are outweighed by how entertainingly it uncovers the corruption (professional and moral) at the heart of the US economy. That the films closes with a warning for the future is the final shock and seal of this great film.
Score: 8.5/10
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