.@melissa_keir: The Big Short Will Scare You #moviereview

​Last week I warned you about feeling sick after seeing the blood and gore in the Revenant. After watching The Big Short, you will leave with a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach for an entirely different reason. I’m giving it an A-.

Based on real life events, The Big Short shows how a few mutual fund managers saw the destruction of the housing bond market and bet against the banks and mortgages in an effort to make money off the failure of the housing bubble.
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Filled with A-list actors from Christian Bale, Brad Pitt, and Ryan Gosling, Steve Carell steals the show. His character is the one with the conscious who while he does bet against the banks, he struggles with the choices he’s made and how it will impact the ordinary people. It’s a shame he wasn’t given an Oscar nod. Christian Bale’s character was hard to watch with his awkward social disability and glass eye. Each word appeared to be a struggle to say. But I found his character a shadow of Carell’s. 

​The movie is wonderfully edited with real life images interspersed throughout. The movie also includes big name actors, actresses and other famous people explaining the banking/mutual fund terms that go over most of our heads. Ryan Gosling’s character narrates the story and breaks into the movie to provide dialogue and reasoning. 

​The part that made me sick is that the banks and mortgage companies were playing with lives and they didn’t seem to care. They were out to make money and it lead to the collapse of the housing market, the loss of millions of jobs and billions of dollars. The scenes where mortgage brokers are bragging about getting bigger bonuses for adjustable rate loans and not even checking credit. These sharks targeted people who had a dream and got them in over their heads. Most of us haven’t recovered from the housing market devastation and we’re being set up for another crisis.

No single character walks away after this unchanged. Each one has been affected by their part. And you will be too.

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