Inside Job
- Year:2010
- Rating:PG
- Director:Charles Ferguson
- Cast:Matt Damon
- Release Date:February 17, 2011
- Distributor:Sony
- Running time:108 minutes
- Film Worth:$16.50
- FILMINK rates movies out of $20 - the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
This comprehensive analysis of the Global Financial Crisis makes for powerful – if disheartening – viewing.
It has been over two years since The Global Financial Crisis, but are you still unfamiliar with the relationship between major financial institutions like Lehman Brothers and concepts like "predatory lending"? Are you confused and angry about how major corporations and regulatory agencies are still being led by many of the same people whose irresponsibility helped to cause this crisis in the first place?
Charles H. Ferguson's documentary Inside Job offers clear, lucid answers to many of these concerns. Oscar nominated (and a talking point at Cannes last year, where it overshadowed Oliver Stone's similarly themed Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps), Inside Job persuasively shows the key regulatory decisions - made by left and right alike - which led to The Global Financial Crisis, naming names of many of the key figures involved.
Narrated by Matt Damon, Inside Job skirts comparisons with Alex Gibney's more personalised portrait of corporate/individual corruption, Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room, by focusing on the hypocrisy of corporate and government leaders attempting to protect their own assets at the expense of many of their investors and clients. (Watching as an unseen Ferguson - quietly, but shrewdly - interrogates academics and government officials who are financially involved with many of these irresponsible corporations is perversely enjoyable.)
Not everything about the film is completely successful though. For one thing, it relies too heavily on undermining many officials' credibility by contrasting their statements with on-screen text and voice-over narration which reveals their incomes, an editorial technique which diminishes with repetition. Moreover, the filmmakers also miscue some tonal shifts in the editing, as the film flits between earnestness and mocking sarcasm with jarring jump/music cuts.
Despite these issues, Inside Job is a powerful experience and functions as one of the better guides for understanding The Global Financial Crisis in the documentary format.
