LAMORINDA WEEKLY | 'The Big Short'


Photo Paramount Pictures all rights reserved (c) 2015

What's a Star Wars? Forget "Star Wars." Rush out and see "The Big Short," a behemoth of a modern disaster film, which depicts actual events that amazingly, unbelievably led to a group of regular financial sector individuals to get filthy rich by betting against the unlikely bubble burst that was inflating the U.S. economy.

One of the best films of the year, "The Big Short" is suspenseful, entertaining and speaks to a wide audience. When I saw the film, I was surprised to find that the audience was split between college age and retirement age, likely skewed by the hotness of the cast (take "hotness" to mean whatever you want). Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Christian Bale and one of Ocean's eleven himself, Brad Pitt, lead an all-star cast to show you how greed almost destroyed the world and how the best odds for gambling were not in Vegas robbing a casino. They were betting against powerful individuals and their stupidity.

The film brilliantly calls attention to its own flaws by having characters constantly breaking the fourth wall, talking to the camera and telling the audience, "No, this wasn't really how it happened," and then laughing at the fact you thought it did. By the end, however, when the really dystopian, end of days' stuff starts happening, the film subtly lets you know that this part of the story is 100 percent accurate, leaving the audience dumbstruck.

These guys saw the criminal activity. They saw the callous swindling at all levels. They saw the cover-up. And they did what any American would - they made themselves rich with it.

"The Big Short" is fresh filmmaking, with director Adam McKay not obsessed about being realistic - much of the dialogue is wooden and definitely did not happen - and often using cutaways with absurd explanations of boring material, like a supermodel in a bubble bath talking "dirty" money with you. And then after the film has baited you with the expected "Oceans Eleven"-style familiar heist trope, it suddenly reveals itself as a serious, morally conscious, entertaining film with performances rising in power at the exact same rate.

Carell will get an Oscar nomination and perhaps a deserving win for playing the cynical, moral center of the film, making you forget he ever made you laugh as a "40 Year Old Virgin" or sitting in "The Office." He is instantly a classic and gives speeches that show off his tremendous growth as an actor over the years.

Others in the cast hold their own, but to a more subdued degree, including Bale, who gave up doing more superhero movies for a change up in roles like this one, where he plays a hot and bothered financial genius who saw it coming first.

Based on a true story, like the film proclaims "The Big Short" has a "bigger impact on your life than the iPhone." Most people were affected by the housing crisis in some way. As the world economies still try to recover, jobs start to rebound, and politicians on both sides of the aisle let those involved go scot-free, the film is a must see. It happened in our own galaxy. There is no sequel. End of franchise.