REVIEW #179 The Big Short (2015)

Set during the mid 2000’s a group of financial experts predict the collapse of the financial market, discovering the vulnerability of the subprime mortgage system and the corruption behind them. Hedging their bets, shorting the market in the build up to the late 2007 financial crash.


Adam McKay created the perfect blend of informative storytelling and entertainment with The Big Short, leaving me seriously impressed. Although very factual the lead characters, based on very real people, were seriously entertaining. With a cast that includes Ryan Gosling, Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Brad Pitt and Jeremy Strong I knew that I was going to see impressive performances but they surpassed my expectations with such captivating portrayals of their real life counterparts. What I loved about The Big Short was that, although it was humorous at times, the comedy never felt forced, the jokes weren’t cringeworthy and there were no ironic parody’s unlike Don’t Look Up. I found the storyline incredibly fascinating, there is a lot of complicated terminology but McKays way of explaining it to the audience by making certain characters or celebrity cameos break the 4th wall to explain directly to the audience worked amazingly. That technique lifted the film, it meant there was never a dull moment and combined with the nice fast pace it kind of had my heart racing along side the characters! I would also like to compliment the editing because there is a lot going on in this film, typography with factual information, characters breaking the 4th wall, freeze frames and cut scenes, so it was vital that the editing created smooth transitions that reduced the risk of the film feeling too packed and they got it absolutely spot on. In previous reviews I’ve mentioned how much I enjoy coming out of a film having learned so much and that’s exactly what happened here, I knew about the financial crash a little bit but The Big Short provided me with much more information and portrayed it in such an easily digestible way. They even broke the 4th wall to tell us the parts that weren’t factually correct, which was a really nice touch. I know I have sung the praises of this film throughout this review pretty heavily but it was one of my favourite watches this year and having heavily criticised Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up it’s only fair I praise him for his successes too. As you can tell, I would recommend this film to anyone and I think it’s available on a few streaming sites but I watched it on Netflix, be sure to check it out if you haven’t already. 


Overall (9.2/10)

Thanks for reading.

Callan

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