Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on May 2011

This movie will make you mad. Okay, madder. It’s as though James Bond was this time cruelly defeated and the greedy, warped villains won, taking over Wall Street and governments as well as financial rating and regulatory agencies, and even corrupting academia in order to attain untold wealth while remaining beyond the law. I don‘t pretend to understand everything that led up to the 2008 global economic meltdown or the tottering financial instruments made up by the weasels on the Street. But muckraking filmmaker Charles Ferguson (No End in Sight) does, lays it all out here in a clear and well-argued manner, and gets Matt Damon to narrate it. By the end of this furious and infuriating film you will understand how the deregulation begun by Reagan and supported by Clinton and the Bushes led to the outrageous state within our financial institutions in which “advisors” sell complicated derivatives based on purposefully bad mortgages to trusting customers, and then turn around and bet that they will fail. Because they’ll make more money that way. Throughout the film, you’re thinking, “Why aren’t any of these guys in jail?” Mr. Obama? Sounds like a goal we can all work toward.