Margin Call [Blu-ray]

Great mystery on the facts and their consequences of the muni bond disaster of 2008.

This film and the Big Short are like master classes on what is wrong with our current system. This film is the story of a tense 24-hour period at a high-powered Wall Street firm. When risk analyst Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto) discovers that the firm is on the brink of financial ruin due to excessive leverage, executives scramble to contain the damage. This leads to a moral and strategic dilemma: do they act ethically and risk the firm's survival, or offload toxic assets onto unsuspecting buyers?

Rare video, extremely hard-to-find a good copy anymore. Repackaged disc, with minor surface imperfections, still plays okay. Paid full price for a new disc, not a pre-owned/used copy. No factory security stickers either.

This was a good movie and good DVD. It features a good cast and I recommend it.

What is the real meaning of margin call? For common people who are occupied by their daily living problems the meaning of margin call is not the same as high tower scavengers that are consuming a carrion to its bones. Margin call for this type of animal is when the remaining skeleton is alarming the end of meat to eat.

Good!

Extraordinary. It moves you slowly into the strange world of investment banking, and unheard of terms (let alone understood) like Credit Default Swap and CDO. But it's so fascinating you want to know about this secret world, which can impact all our lives. I kept waiting for someone to get shot or pushed down an empty elevator shaft, and it was refreshing there was none of that nonsense. Just solid writing.It moves very slowly, which makes the suspense even more intense. There's lots of symbolism: the death of the beloved labrador dog of one of the bosses, the cleaning woman in the elevator, representing all the little people, standing passively between two of the top traders as they openly exchange info with each other because they know she won't have a clue to what they're discussing. Oh, and the conversation between Will and his recently-fired boss Eric is brilliant.Fantastic cast! Kevin Spacey, Demi Moore, Jeremy Irons, Paul Bettany, Zachary Quinto, Simon Baker, Stanley Tucci, etc. are so right on. I wrote down all the things I didn't understand, so I would educate myself and understand them the next time I watched it.And the second time really was better, because I had a good idea of what was really happening out there. It's kind of a morality play; unlike Too Big to Fail, a good movie which was more historically factual but with less insight, the cast struggles through uncomfortable conundrums and personal motives.Anyone interested in Wall Street and what's going on behind those protected doors should love this movie, but one caveat: I've never seen a movie that squeezed so many f bombs into two hours. Holy cow, is that how they really talk?

The best 'fictionalized' movie depiction of the true chaos and criminal behavior of the 2007-2008 global financial crisis, seen from within an investment bank that could very well just be called "Lehman Brothers".As a banker who worked during the crisis (and knew all too well how rotten Lehman's books were, filled with garbage structured securities - admittedly every major investment bank had some level of mis-priced CMBS, CDO holdings - but Lehman was the worst of the bunch, followed closely by Citigroup) this movie does an excellent job of depicting how traders tried to dump these securities onto investors as the crisis was beginning.Bankers 'financial engineering', creating and selling mortgage-backed securities -- whose true underlying value was never clearly understood by most bankers in the first place and relied on the false premise that housing values always increase -- was one key cause of inflating the credit bubble, as the 'risk' of loan repayment was moved from lenders to investors but the movie does not get too deep into the causes of the crisis (for more on that I recommend the excellent, Academy-award winning documentary 'Inside Job')In terms of showing the frantic nature of Wall St. once the cracks began to show however, the movie -largely- gets the facts and events correct. In addition to simply telling a largely true story, the movie itself is a riveting piece of drama with top-notch performances from its star-studded cast; Kevin Spacey, Stanley Tucci, Simon Baker, Demi Moore and Jeremy Irons are all at the top of their game (Spacey deserved an Oscar nod for his work). Paul Bettany and Zachary Quinto add to these excellent ensemble acting.5 Stars and a must-see.