NDNF: Margin Call

J.C. Chandor's feature debut Margin Call is a fresh, razor sharp and timely film acted effortlessly by a strong ensemble cast. It paints the clearest portrait of our economic climate today by not trying to dumb the concepts in ways that are still difficult to grasp, like Inside Job, but rather through getting into the mindset of those involved in such corporate meltdowns. The film is strongest in its first half, as most films are, when the banking company at the center of the film's problems are just revealed and a cast of strange characters ranging all different levels of corporate authority spend an entire night in very limited office space in what plays out as one of the most compelling thrillers you'd ever see. The film goes on, however, as the cancer spreads and the settings open up. We see these characters at their edges, at their harshest and at their most desperate. Zachary Quinto is underused in the film but still effective with his heavy glare that speaks volumes to all the different equations and thought processes going behind his character's mind as he penetrates a bizarre world of corporate elders that seems akin to Dante's Inferno. Bosses answer to other bosses who answer to other bosses that grow stranger and more powerful though with less soul as you go up the ranks until Jeremy Irons, who rules the operation with an iron fist. He hisses and bellows with authority in the Shakespearean ways he's so good at doing.