The Big Short Won’t Burst Your Bubble

Release Date：Dec/23/2015
Genre：Biography/Drama
Director：Adam McKay
Cast：Christian Bale、Steve Carell、Ryan Gosling、Brad Pitt、Melissa Leo、Hamish Linklater、John Magaro

Viola's Rating：8.4

Nominated for Oscar for five awards including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Film Editing, The Big Short is a biographical feature film based on Michael Lewis’ book of same name which was released on Dec. 23.

During mid-2000s, an eccentric hedge fund manager, a trader and two young investors predict the credit and housing bubble collapses. They become four key players in the creation of the financial crisis of 2007-10, and decide to take on big banks for their greed and lack of foresight.

Casting many amiable A-list actors such as Christian Bale, Steve Carell, and Ryan Gosling and according to Gosling at Golden Globe Awards Ceremony, some other guy – Brad Pitt, The Big Short was shot like a mockumentary that characters sometimes turn their heads and talk to the camera, especially with Gosling for he acts as a narrator in the film.

Interesting enough is that because The Big Short is a story about how four people make fortune by predicting the financial crisis precisely beforehand, there’s no one single leading actor in the motion picture. Gosling, who apparently spoke over in a high percentage didn’t have as many camera shots, and Bale, one of the four main characters who shared more exposure was nominated for Best Supporting Actor.

Since the background is about ten years ago, Director Adam McKay used montage of historical footage and pictures as a preface. Images of employees losing jobs and unsophisticated investors protesting are even more devastating shown on big screen.

Depicting a rather serious topic, The Big Short is not baffling at all, but very informative by demonstrating economic phenomena or terminologies with comical dialogues, main characters’ narration or subtitles. Explaining the basic concept conveying in the movie helps the audiences comprehending what happened when Lehman Brothers went bankrupt.

Using a comedic tone to faithfully present the acidity and darkness of the nature of people in Wall Street who bet against the market makes the picture seem more sarcastic. Through the process giving moviegoers a clear and entertaining feature film from US perspective, The Big Short also provides a horrifying fact which haunts the world economically.

If what holds you back from watching this film is the perplex content that hit hard, don’t worry because as long as you believe that it’s a good motion picture, The Big Short won’t burst your bubble.