Margin Call

Movie Review

Mining theater from a bank’s imbalance sheet

October 21, 2011|By Wesley Morris, Globe Staff

Zachary Quinto stars in and is a producer of Margin Call.

**½

MARGIN CALL Written and directed by: J.C. Chandor

Starring: Kevin Spacey, Paul Bettany, Zachary Quinto, Penn Badgley, Demi Moore, Simon Baker, Stanley Tucci, and Jeremy Irons

At: Boston Common, Coolidge Corner, Kendall Square

Running time: 109 minutes

Rated: R (language of a profane and, for the financially disoriented, arcane nature)

The first person fired by the big investment bank in “Margin Call’’ is a risk analyst. His name is Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci), he’s been researching some bad news, and, freshly sacked, promptly disappears the way some animals head for the hills before a natural disaster. The disaster here is hardly natural, and the movie, by a first-time writer-director named J.C. Chandor, hunkers down in the bank’s risk management wing in order to spin drama from invisible money and an assortment of actors attempting to mine theater from banker jargon. In the case of Jeremy Irons playing the aloof English billionaire who owns the bank, that’s dinner theater. But it’s of the highest caliber.

Irons seems to appreciate the material’s ripeness and dramatic thinness enough to limbo under the top. The central suspense involves how to proceed with the news that the bank’s projected losses are greater than its worth. What should it tell its shareholders? Whose heads should roll? Can they get Eric Dale back into the building for verification? The scenes cover about 36 hours and shuttle among a handful of executives, brokers, and analysts, as they point fingers, strategize, fret, self-defend, and more.

The severe imbalance between argot and emotion makes it impossible to care much about most of what we see. Even though some of the actors asked to make us care are very good - like Tucci, Irons, Paul Bettany, and Kevin Spacey, who runs the risk-management department. There are also parts for Demi Moore, Simon Baker, and Zachary Quinto, who is one of the film’s producers, and has both an insinuating way with quiet and eyebrows that share a parent with Salvador Dalí’s mustache. Chandor situates them in the conference rooms, elevators, rooftops, offices, and escalators of a midtown Manhattan skyscraper.