Margin Call

"Remember this day, boys, remember this day." When a young analyst at a sleek, Wall Street investment firm discovers that the mathematical model they have based their trading on has left the company exposed to billions of dollars of losses, the key players all come together for an all-night session to decide what they should do. The decision they make will not only affect their own future, but potentially that of the whole economy.

Margin Call assembles an almost ludicrously heavyweight cast – from Kevin Spacey, through the Mentalist (sorry, Simon Baker) and Demi Moore, to Jeremy Irons – to ponder the rights and wrongs of the beginnings of the Great Recession. The film is refreshing in its determination not to simply glamourise or demonise these financial wizards, but its desire to sum up the whole crisis means that, at times, the film becomes just a series of static, over-determined conversations held in lofty offices and gleaming toilets. [Keir Roper-Caldbeck]