MOVIE REVIEW | The Big Short (2015)

The Big Short (2015)

In the beginning, you'll wonder how come this movie has been nominated for best picture. To be honest, I thought I would fall asleep. The development of the story was really a challenge since it deals with highly technical mortgaging issues. To an average viewer, it was difficult to follow the narrative and how the link among the main characters are connected. The voice over narration did help a little but it was really confusing at the start.

As with other Oscar films trying to be mentally challenging, The Big Short made a huge effort to engage the audience to make them understand the underlying issues from house mortgages and fraudulent practices in the banking industry. Did it work? I'd say 50-50, because since the audience has to deal with understanding the character development, the esoteric concepts must have been lost along the way.

What really saved the movie is Christian Bale & Steve Carell's acting. Bale was rather effective in portraying this eccentric bordering to the obnoxious economic specialist. Carell's maddening drive to find loops in the system was very effective that it's so easy to hate him.

Ryan Gosling & Brad Pitt's roles were a disappointment. Not because they acted badly, but because their roles were too small for them. If I were to re-write the screenplay, I'd give more elaboration on their characters as they are more interesting and more mysterious as opposed to garage sale owners.

The treatment was seemingly realistic, using candid shots of people everywhere, every now and then. But the photo collages were rather amateur-ish in my opinion. Not really done in good taste, so I give deductions for that. It's like the editing used Windows Movie Maker.