
The customers do not know that they are getting fish that may be rotten. He takes three-day old fish, which has not sold, and throws it into a stew to sell to customers. In another scene, Anthony Bourdain, the well-known chef and television host, is shown cooking in the kitchen of a fancy restaurant. They made money when the securities collapsed. The fans who bet correctly are like the people who successfully bet that mortgage-backed securities would fail. Gomez explains to the audience that some fans will bet that she will lose. She is shown gambling in Las Vegas with a crowd of fans surrounding her. For example, one scene shows Selena Gomez, the famous Latina singer and actress. This is done with visual tools and by celebrities giving easy examples.
#The big short explained movie#
The movie is brilliant at making complex concepts easy to understand. He wanted to expose the truth about mortgage-backed securities.

He also had a strong sense of moral outrage. Mark Baum, another central character in the film, lost his brother to suicide and was tortured by that loss. But because he felt like an outsider, he was comfortable challenging Wall Street about mortgage-backed securities. Michael Burry, a hedge fund manager in San Jose, California, was one of the first to see the housing bubble and credit collapse.īurry had a glass eye, which made him socially awkward and isolated from others. It explores what made the central characters act the way they did. They were quick to offer loans to people without making sure they could pay them back. It also shows the greed of the mortgage bankers and real estate industry. “The Big Short” reveals the fraud of Wall Street firms, such as Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) seemed unaware of the impending crisis.

Yet the rating agencies - who are supposed to be objective and ethical - gave top ratings to these securities. So more and more risky mortgages were put in that basket of securities. But the mortgage bankers lent money to people who weren’t financially sound enough to buy a house. These were considered safe investments, since homeowners historically had rarely failed to pay back their home loans. Wall Street firms put thousands of home mortgages into one basket of securities and sold them to investors and banks. But then in the early 1990s, Lewie Ranieri, a Wall Street banker, created what are called “ mortgage-backed securities” (MBS). The film points out that banking used to be a boring industry in the 1970s. It features outstanding performances by Academy Award-winning actors Christian Bale, Brad Pitt, Melissa Leo and Marisa Tomei. “The Big Short” has been made into a new movie by Adam McKay. They “short” the securities involved in the bubble and end up making a great fortune. “The Big Short” tells the story of four outsiders in the world of high finance who predict the credit and housing bubble collapse before anyone else does. There is a person on the other side of the trade who bets that the investment will go up in value.

In finance, “to short” an investment means to bet that it will go down in value. Michael Lewis, the best-selling author of several books about Wall Street, explains how the financial crisis came about in a book called “The Big Short.” The New York Times calls it “one of the best business books of the past two decades.” Stock markets fell, and international trade declined. From 2008 to 2012, economies around the world slowed. And trillions of dollars in consumer wealth was lost. It was the worst financial downturn since the 1930s. economy plunged into “the Great Recession.” That meant the economy was weak and many people lost money. Hence the involvement of leading men Ryan Gosling, Christian Bale and Steve Carell, who, in their different ways, share a knack for appearing antisocial and emotionally detached.In 2008, two big Wall Street firms, or companies that trade money and investments, collapsed. Indeed, the comic premise here is that the financial system can only truly be grasped by weirdos: guys with savant-like qualities and a corresponding lack of social skills.

Still, McKay hasn't lost his touch as a director of comic performances, and the didactic format lets him shake off a lot of sodden Hollywood convention: the characters aren't required to learn spiritual lessons or even be particularly likeable. His nervous style is strong on rapid zooms and wobbly close-ups, with some deliberately incongruous soundtrack choices, such as The Polyphonic Spree's cover of Nirvana's Lithium, thrown in as we hop from one subplot to the next.įor all its liveliness, The Big Short can be heavy going: the dialogue remains weighed down with jargon, and the storytelling gimmicks distract more than they clarify. McKay's solution owes something to Martin Scorsese and rather more to Michael Winterbottom (especially Winterbottom's films with Steve Coogan).
