“Investment Prophets”

Margin Call

To the average layman (those of us who don’t work on Wall Street) understanding the language of investment banking is like trying to translate hieroglyphics. But there’s no doubt that it would have been fascinating to be a fly on the wall of a Wall Street boardroom on the eve of the 2008 economic collapse and watch the devious planning of greedy bankers that would ultimately cause the U.S. economy to crumble to its knees.

J.C. Chandor’s sensational new financial thriller “Margin Call” lets us do just that. It’s 2008 at an unnamed investment banking firm (but you can fill in that blank with names like Lehman Brothers or Goldman Sachs) and a team of senior executives are overseeing the systematic layoffs of more than 60% of their work staff. One of the employees being fired is Eric Dale (played by Stanley Tucci). As security escorts him out of the building, he hands a computer disk-stick to another employee and warns him to “be careful”. That employee returns to his office, boots up his computer and begins to study the data which causes extreme alarm.