Directed by Adam McKay (Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues; Step Brothers) and starring Christian Bale (The Fighter; American Hustle; The Dark Knight Rises; The Prestige; 3:10 to Yuma), Steve Carell (Foxcatcher; Crazy, Stupid, Love; Hope springs; Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues), Ryan Gosling (The Ides of March; Blue Valentine; Drive; The Place Beyond the Pines) and Brad Pitt (12 Years a Slave; Moneyball; The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; Inglourious Basterds; Ocean's Twelve).

Docudrama, 130 mins, 6+

This film follows three parallel stories set in the years from 2005 and the lead-up to the mortgage housing crisis in the US. One features Michael Burry (Christian Bale), a highly-intelligent mathematician-cum-hedge-fund-manager who is convinced the market will peak and crash; the second features Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling) as an investor at Deutschebank who is equally convinced the market is fradulent and convinces Mark Baum (Steve Carell), another fund manager who has personal issues to deal with; and the third features two youn investors who started out with 110,000 USD a few years ago and have built a portfolio worth 30m USD and who want to sit "at the big table" and come across a prospectus and enlist the help of retired trader Ben Rickert (Brad Pitt).

The three stories follow the markets as they rise, until eventually sub-prime mortgages do peak and fall off, yet the sub-prime mortgage bonds (in which they are all trading) inexplicably are not affected. This is when the roller-coaster of a ride starts to get really hairy and only those with nerves of steel will survive. They take on the big banks for their lack of foresight and greed and predict that the bubble will burst.

The star-studded cast does very well in this docudrama which is based on the book of the same name by Michael Lewis. However, the screenplay involves one of the characters doubling up as a narrator with an almost flippant and tongue-in-cheek attitude that actually goes some way to relieving the tension in this very technical film; to follow and understand what is going on it really helps to have some understanding of terminology used in trading. The film includes a huge number fo characters, yet it is relatively straight-forward to follow them all and understand in which strand they belong.

In the macro context, this films examines how capitalism went too far, destroying the lives of many individuals and families who were duped into purchasing mortgages based on fraudulent advice from agents who exploited a system that was fed by corporate greed in which ratings agencies were also complicit.

Nominated for 4 Golden Globes...