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It may have happened something like this. "Margin Call" depicts the last night of good times on Wall Street, as a deadly certainty travels up the executive ladder at an investment firm: Disastrous speculation in the mortgage markets is leading to the firm's collapse. We can still recall those days in the summer of 2008, during the Obama-McCain campaign, when America seemed awash in prosperity, and the stock market was setting records. Then one firm after another was forced to declare bankruptcy, the nation's economic structure was threatened, and Congress ponied up its huge bailout.

"Margin Call" begins on a day at an unnamed investment firm that must certainly have an inkling of what's coming, since 80 percent of the work force is laid off. One of the victims is Eric ( Stanley Tucci ), a senior risks analyst who like many of his colleagues was incapable of seeing that the real estate market was built as a house of cards. Although writer-director J.C. Chandor's film has sympathy for most of its characters, it is important to remember that they all felt they had to play along with the deals that were bringing their firms such huge profits and bonuses.

On his way out the door, Eric slips a USB drive to Peter ( Zachary Quinto ), a younger analyst who wasn't fired. There's information on it that disturbs him. So it should. While the office is empty, and the survivors are out partying to celebrate not being fired, Peter realizes the firm and the market are clearly trembling on the brink. He contacts his supervisor, Will ( Paul Bettany ), who takes one look and calls his boss, Sam ( Kevin Spacey ). Others are called in for an all-night emergency meeting until at dawn as a helicopter brings in CEO John Tuld ( Jeremy Irons ).

You don't need to understand a lot about the markets to follow the film. John is a cool, polished Brit who likes to say things like, "Speak to me in plain terms," because his job requires him to manage the corporation but not necessarily understand its business. Indeed, as we now know, a fresh young college graduate could have looked at the balance sheets and clearly seen Wall Street was doomed.

It is up to John to make the margin call. In other words, to order his company to start dumping worthless holdings before the word spread that they are worthless — essentially, betraying their customers. It has now been established that some firms created hedge funds intended to fail, so they could make money betting against them. These they sold to their customers knowing they were worthless.

I think the movie is about how its characters are concerned only by the welfare of their corporations. There is no larger sense of the public good. Corporations are amoral, and exist to survive and succeed, at whatever human cost. This is what the Occupy Wall Street protesters are angry about: They are not against capitalism, but about Wall Street dishonesty and greed.

"Margin Call" employs an excellent cast who can make financial talk into compelling dialogue. They also can reflect the enormity of what is happening: Their company and their lives are being rendered meaningless. This scenario was enacted at many Wall Street institutions on the autumn of 2008, and fundamental financial reform is still being opposed. No particular firm is named, but doesn't it seem to you that the name of the Jeremy Irons character, "John Tuld," has an echo of Richard Fuld, CEO of Lehman Brothers, who collected enormous bonuses for leading his company into bankruptcy?

Irons is sly in the role, a man who knows his own financial stability is unassailable, who considers his job as an amoral exercise, who has made it to the top by not particularly caring about people. A great corporate executive must have a strain of ruthlessness. I also admired Kevin Spacey, who projects incisive intelligence in his very manner, and Demi Moore , as a senior executive who has risen to just below the glass ceiling and knows she will stay there.

The physical world of the film itself is effective. It's all glass, steel and protocol, long black cars and executive perks, luxurious lifestyles paid for with what was inescapably fraud. One of the characters has a sick dog. The dog is the only creature in the entire film that anyone likes.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Film Credits

Margin Call (2011)

Rated R for language

107 minutes

Paul Bettany as Will Emerson

Demi Moore as Sarah Robertson

Stanley Tucci as Eric Dale

Jeremy Irons as John Tuld

Mary McDonnell as Mary Rogers

Simon Baker as Jared Cohen

Kevin Spacey as Sam Rogers

Penn Badgley as Seth Bregman

Zachary Quinto as Peter Sullivan

Written and directed by

• J.C. Chandor

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Margin call, common sense media reviewers.

Thoughtful Wall Street drama has drinking, language.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

In a time of financial crisis, these characters ge

Sam Rogers is arguably the most responsible charac

Occasional arguing.

A brief scene takes place in a fancy bar, where wa

Very strong, fairly frequent language includes mul

A McDonald's "M" (golden arches) is visible twice

Characters smoke and drink constantly. One charact

Parents need to know that the biggest issue of concern in this dramatic thriller set on the eve of a huge Wall Street market crash is language. Characters liberally use "f--k," "s--t," and other strong words throughout the drama. They also drink and smoke frequently, seemingly as a response to stress. There's a brief…

Positive Messages

In a time of financial crisis, these characters generally disagree on the right thing to do. Some of the characters appear to lean toward self-preservation at others' expense. But many of the main characters doubt this path, even though it's not clear exactly what they should do.

Positive Role Models

Sam Rogers is arguably the most responsible character; he argues against the self-preservation action that the firm's leaders want to take. But in the end, he loses the argument and ends up going with the company.

Violence & Scariness

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A brief scene takes place in a fancy bar, where waitresses are seen wearing sexy outfits while serving. One character mentions the amount of money he's spent on hookers.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Very strong, fairly frequent language includes multiple uses of "f--k," as well as "Jesus Christ," "s--t," "ass," and single uses of "p---y," "c--t," and "t-ts."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

A McDonald's "M" (golden arches) is visible twice during an aerial view of the city. A bottle of Snapple brand water is visible on a desk. Nicorette gum is mentioned by name.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Characters smoke and drink constantly. One character frantically chews Nicorette gum but succumbs to having a real cigarette from time to time. Other characters smoke the occasional cigarette as well. One character drinks heavily throughout the night, swigging from a bottle in a paper bag. Main characters are seen drinking in a bar.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that the biggest issue of concern in this dramatic thriller set on the eve of a huge Wall Street market crash is language. Characters liberally use "f--k," "s--t," and other strong words throughout the drama. They also drink and smoke frequently, seemingly as a response to stress. There's a brief scene in a fancy bar with sexy waitresses in skimpy clothes, and some brand names are visible from time to time. Despite all this, the movie is thoughtful and patient -- though teens may not be interested in the subject matter. But those who are could learn a bit about the ins and outs of recent Wall Street history. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

• Parents say (3)
• Kids say (2)

Based on 3 parent reviews

Compelling drama about inside of Wall St firms

Gripping corporate thriller for adults and older/mature teens, what's the story.

In 2008, a Wall Street firm carries out a round of layoffs. One of the men to lose his job is Eric Dale ( Stanley Tucci ); he has discovered that the risky portfolios the company has been dealing with have stretched things too thin and that a huge crash is imminent. He leaves his findings with a young broker, Peter Sullivan ( Zachary Quinto ); by the middle of the night, all of the company's head honchos are sitting in tense meetings, trying to figure out what to do: protect the public interest or save their own jobs.

Is It Any Good?

J.C. Chandor makes his feature writing and directing debut here, and it's a very strong effort, suggesting a huge talent on the rise. MARGIN CALL is sometimes like a theatrical play, taking place on limited sets over a limited timeframe, with plenty of well-written, well-delivered monologues and dialogue. The plus side of this is that the movie gets some amazingly good performances from a wide range of actors, including Demi Moore , Simon Baker , Paul Bettany , and especially Jeremy Irons and Kevin Spacey (the latter has by far the richest role).

Chandor also throws in some remarkable little touches here and there that no stage play could get at, such as a young broker ditching his bottle of alcohol just before entering a conference room, or a cleaning lady overhearing some vague but tense details of the night's drama. This is a quiet, thoughtful little movie that teens with an interest in national affairs will find highly impressive and hauntingly memorable.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the way in which many of the characters drink alcohol and smoke , as if out of necessity. Are the characters enjoying their drinks and cigarettes? What are the other reasons they could be smoking and drinking so much? What are some healthier ways to respond to stress?

Does the movie have a clear message? Does it have a clear hero? What would have been the right thing to do in this situation?

What do stock brokers actually do, according to the movie? Why do they bring in such big paychecks?

Movie Details

• In theaters : October 21, 2011
• On DVD or streaming : December 20, 2011
• Cast : Kevin Spacey , Paul Bettany , Zachary Quinto
• Director : J.C. Chandor
• Inclusion Information : Gay actors
• Studio : Roadside Attractions
• Genre : Drama
• Run time : 105 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : language
• Last updated : April 22, 2024

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The 2008 economic collapse is one of the major events of our lifetimes and some filmmakers have rushed to turn the events into A Very Serious and Important Movie.  J.C. Chandor's Margin Call would like to be that movie.  It dresses up its respected cast in fine suits, puts them in the financial world, and then has them look at computer monitors and say "Fuck me..." in astonishment about 80-90 times throughout the course of the film.  Chandor wants to bury the audience in the world of financial intrigue and corruption without doing the hard work of explaining the machinations of that world in any kind of detail.  He gets away with it for the first half-hour as the audience becomes wrapped in a propulsive, plot-driven drama, but by the end the only saving grace is Kevin Spacey playing against type.

Margin Call takes place over a 24-hour time period in a major financial firm.  The day begins with an executive in risk management ( Stanley Tucci ) getting fired, but before he leaves the building he gives a thumb-drive to his employee ( Zachary Quinto ) with the warning, "Be careful."  The employee, a former rocket scientist, cracks the data on the thumb-drive and calls his superior ( Paul Bettany ) who looks at the data and says, "Fuck me..."  He then calls his superior (Spacey) who looks at the data and says, "Fuck me..."  He then calls his superiors ( Simon Baker and Demi Moore ), "Fuck me...", up the chain, and so forth until it reaches the big boss ( Jeremy Irons ).

Despite the repetition, Chandor is able to keep the momentum and drive of his script going throughout the first act, but then the story and momentum collapse as the particulars of this financial firm become less and less believable.  Movies like this are usually filled with technical jargon and require an audience surrogate so another character can explain the complexities in layman's terms.  That audience surrogate should not be a higher-up.  Quinto has to explain to Spacey that the data means the company has loads of crap on its books based on shoddy projections and that the firm will be dead in a few weeks if they can't get rid of it.  Later, Quinto has to explain to Irons that how the crap came from the mortgage market.  Both Spacey and Irons have lines like "You know I don't understand this stuff," and "Explain it to me like you would a child."

Chandor may be trying to imply that the fault of the financial meltdown was from sheer recklessness and stupidity, but that's a simplistic and inaccurate understanding of the crisis.  Spacey's character may be a salesman whose best trait is his ability to inspire his employees, but we have to believe he doesn't understand financial figures and the value of his product.  We also have to believe that Irons' character stumbled out of the ether, and idiotically took over a financial institution.  If Chandor truly believes this, then he has essentially removed any blatant greed or criminality from financial firms.  Even if this fictional company isn't meant to stand in for a dead firm like Lehman Brothers or Bear Sterns, we still have to believe that nobody knew anything and that simply isn't true.

When you remove that responsibility, then Margin Call could not come at a worst time.  There's no tragedy at play since these character have no one else to blame and the movie only plays to an audience that thinks, "Boy, I hope these rich Wall Street executives make it out okay."  The story lacks drama and insight because most of the characters wander around dumbstruck by the impending calamity and only Bettany hits upon the salient point that the American people will be furious at the Street for the collapse, but no one asked where the money was coming from as long as it kept rolling in.  It's an idea that would work far better if Chandor ever took a step outside the firm and introduced an everyman who could not only serve as an audience surrogate, but also as a representative of how the collapse will affect the average person.  But there is barely any world beyond the firm and we have to spend time with empty suits worrying about their jobs.

The only character we only get to know is Spacey's (although Tucci gets a meaningless speech about a bridge he built), and the respected actor does a great job playing against type.  We all know he can do a heartless executive in his sleep and he's also played the high-profile fraud with his portrayal of Jack Abramoff in Casino Jack .  But in Margin Call , his character is faced with a moral choice, which makes him one of the story's few sympathetic characters.  The film lets him off the hook with his ignorance of how the meltdown happened, but it puts him in the driver's seat for how he's going to react.  There's no smarm to Spacey's performance and it's a nice change of pace for the actor.

Unfortunately Margin Call wastes the rest of its talented cast by making them nothing more than plastic figures moving around a poorly constructed play set (Note to toy manufacturers: do not make the Financial Firm Play Set).  The devil is in the details and Chandor wants to make a movie without devils or even people.  We need a good film about the financial collapse, but if Margin Call is the best we can get, then fuck me...

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Margin Call

Where to watch.

Rent Margin Call on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV, or buy it on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV.

What to Know

Smart, tightly wound, and solidly acted, Margin Call turns the convoluted financial meltdown of '08 into gripping, thought-provoking drama.

Critics Reviews

Audience reviews, cast & crew.

J.C. Chandor

Kevin Spacey

Paul Bettany

Will Emerson

Jeremy Irons

Zachary Quinto

Peter Sullivan

Penn Badgley

Seth Bregman

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• One Good Thing

One Good Thing: 107 minutes of Wall Street traders behaving badly

Help, I can’t stop rewatching this 11-year-old corporate thriller nobody saw in theaters.

by Dylan Matthews

I think it was on my third or fourth viewing of Margin Call , the 2011 corporate thriller starring Zachary Quinto and Jeremy Irons, that I realized I finally understood Grateful Dead fans.

I was of course familiar with the Dead; I grew up across the river from Vermont. I thought they were just … fine. “Friend of the Devil” was a fun song. Cherry Garcia is an okay ice cream flavor. But why did a band so average-seeming, so unexceptional to me, inspire such a dedicated fanbase? Why would people follow them around, spending thousands of dollars producing and trading bootlegs of their favorite live sets?

I feel about Margin Call the way Deadheads feel about the Dead. Everyone thinks this movie is a fairly routine, not particularly notable drama. Most people don’t get the obsessive, fanatical love I have for it. This must be the Deadheads’ struggle: confusion and frustration that the whole world hasn’t fallen as rapturously in love with the art they love so much. Around the moment that Quinto takes out his headphones and realizes the bank where he works is in desperate, desperate trouble, it clicked for me.

Deadheads sometimes talk about the “X factor” : the indescribable aspect of a performance that elevates it to a higher level. There are certainly aspects of my love for Margin Call that are similarly difficult to put into words. At some level, either you find Jeremy Irons telling Quinto to “speak as you might to a young child. Or a golden retriever. It wasn’t brains that brought me here,” to be funny, or you don’t.

But to a large degree, my love for Margin Call boils down to it being the one film that, more than any other, seems to understand the modern workplace (or at least the office workplace), and the moral compromises involved in living and thriving in that world.

Some introductory Margin notes

In case you aren’t already a diehard Marginalist: Margin Call chronicles a day in the life of an investment bank at the outset of the financial crisis of 2008. Conditions are rough from the start; the film begins with Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci), the head of risk management at the firm, getting booted in the latest round of layoffs. Before leaving the building, Dale tosses a flash drive to his protégé, the erstwhile rocket scientist Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto). His last words, as the elevator closes, are “be careful.” It doesn’t take long for Sullivan to dive into Dale’s spreadsheet and realize that if the firm’s mortgage-backed investments fall in value by even a modest amount, it could bankrupt the company.

Sullivan freaks out and tells his boss, Will Emerson (a wonderfully sardonic Paul Bettany), who freaks out and tells his boss, Sam Rogers (Kevin Spacey), who grudgingly tells his much-younger boss Jared Cohen (Simon Baker), who finally calls in the firm’s CEO John Tuld for a 4 am meeting. Portrayed with remarkable charisma and menace by Jeremy Irons, Tuld decides how to deal with the toxic assets, which he describes as “the biggest bag of odorous excrement ever assembled in the history of capitalism.” His decision is astonishing, and his colleagues immediately realize what it means. The rest of the film chronicles their attempt to come to terms with it all.

This does not sound like the most riveting of material. And as I have learned the hard way, after forcing various friends and loved ones to watch it with me, Margin Call is not for everyone. It belongs to the micro-genre that the writer Max Read memorably labeled “halogencore” : It and peers like Michael Clayton , The Assistant , Shattered Glass , and Moneyball are thrillers set in offices, where the drama is fueled by white-collar misconduct or incompetence, and where the characters grow by learning something new about the bureaucracy to which they’ve given a portion of their lives.

Movies like that, much like all mid-budget dramas meant for adults and not featuring superheroes , are hard to get made these days. But they scratch a very particular itch. They thrive on specificity, on the norms and jargon of a particular institution. Margin Call ’s dialogue (“the standard VAR model,” “go block by block,” “we’re fill or kill at 65”) approaches the spy cant of John Le Carré in its density. But writer-director J.C. Chandor assumes the viewer is smart and a quick learner, and can grasp what they need to grasp. Like the Grateful Dead, he’s here for the superfans first and foremost.

The banality of greed

Chandor’s script is obsessed with the moral implications of white-collar work, and specifically how workers cope with and adapt to those implications. Some become self-loathing, even self-pitying, like the Spacey and Tucci characters; the latter waxes nostalgic about his prior career as a structural engineer, building bridges that helped actual people, rather than shuffling numbers around. Some come up with grandiose self-rationalizations for why what they’re doing either doesn’t matter (“It’s just money ,” Irons’s character says, “it’s made up ”) or is somehow helping the middle class (“If people want to live like this, in their cars and the big fucking houses they can’t even pay for, then you’re necessary,” Bettany admonishes a younger colleague).

This, to me, is the main attraction of Margin Call . It’s a movie that takes work — office work, people sitting at desks typing stuff into laptops — seriously, as an activity with moral significance. And what sets it apart from other films, even some other halogencore films, is that the moral questions it asks are about the work itself, not some extreme violation outside that work’s code of ethics. Shattered Glass is about a reporter making up stories out of whole cloth; Michael Clayton is about a corporation hiring hitmen to murder potential whistleblowers as part of a coverup.

The choice that CEO John Tuld (Irons) makes in the middle of Margin Call , by contrast, is not a crime. When someone raises the prospects of “the feds” stopping the move, executive Ramesh Shah (Aasif Mandvi), implied to be a lawyer, pushes back: “They can slow you down. They can’t stop you.” This is a choice they can make in the course of doing business. It’s just part of being a banker. And it will hurt many, many people.

Margin Call is suffused with small moments showing how this ethos corrupts the people who embrace it. At one point, Peter Sullivan (Quinto) and his younger colleague Seth Bregman (Penn Badgley) are at a strip club, looking for Eric Dale (Tucci). Bregman immediately starts speculating about how much the dancers make in a night. Will Emerson (Bettany) tells Sullivan and Bregman that he made $2.5 million in a year, but it wasn’t that great, because “you learn to spend what’s in your pocket.” Sam Rogers (Spacey) clearly thinks of himself as the man in the room with a real conscience, but it never occurs to him that the firm’s actions might destroy the career of his son at another bank. The firm comes before his own child.

These men (and apart from an underutilized Demi Moore, they’re all men) have seen themselves warped, in ways large and small, by their work, by work for which they are paid obscene amounts and which they have no intention of ever stopping.

Toward the end of the film, Rogers is giving a pep talk to a room of traders, “People are going to say some very nasty things about what we do here today, and about what you’ve dedicated a portion of your lives to,” he tells them. “But have faith that in the bigger picture, our skills have not been wasted. We have accomplished much, and our talents have been used for the greater good.” This is a man doing something he knows is wrong, and not just that but wielding his power to make dozens of other people do something he knows is wrong. The brilliance of the movie is its illustration of why he, and so many like him, make that choice, again and again and again.

Margin Call is available to stream on Netflix and Hulu . For more recommendations from the world of culture, check out the One Good Thing archives.

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Review: margin call.

Margin Call loves speechifying, but the film is far more assured when lingering in the silence of its morally compromised characters.

A portrait of the eve of 2008’s financial crisis that plays out with funereal inevitability, Margin Call loves speechifying, but the film is far more assured when lingering in the silence of its morally compromised characters. First-time writer-director J.C. Chandor’s drama concerns a fictional Wall Street firm that, courtesy of research done by a recently downsized risk-management employee (Stanley Tucci) who passes his findings along to a hotshot “rocket scientist” underling (Zachary Quinto), discovers that its lousy, leveraged securities threaten impending ruin. This dire revelation is quickly passed up the corporate ladder, resulting in an all-night raft of meetings and debates between the company’s higher-ups. From troubled trading-floor boss Sam (Kevin Spacey), his second-in-command Will (Paul Bettany), and financial officer Sarah (Demi Moore), to bluntly self-interested CEO John Tuld (Jeremy Irons), employees are left to grapple not only with the enormous cost wrought by their reckless derivatives risks on the firm and the economy, but with the potential professional and ethical cost survival will entail. It’s the stuff of blustery masters-of-the-universe melodrama, which is why Chandor’s debut is most striking for its general refusal to douse his material in Oliver Stone glitz and sizzle, eschewing Wall Street ’s aesthetic sexiness and glorification for a sober-minded consideration of its eve-of-apocalypse scenario.

Conflict in Margin Call doesn’t arise from histrionic confrontations, but resides within Sam, who struggles with Tuld’s order to have his traders sell all of their worthless securities, a move that will save the firm short-term but have long-lasting repercussions on individual and corporate reputations. The director’s fondness for having his characters encapsulate the story’s contradictory moral positions via longwinded oration can be an anchor on the proceedings’ momentum, even if said lectures capture the bald-faced, coldly reasoned avarice that drives the industry. His sardonic jabs at his milieu’s inhabitants, however, ring truer: the executives’ constant demands that things be explained “in plain English” (a dig at their cluelessness about their business’ actual operations), or a scene in which cutthroat bigwig Jared (Simon Baker) and Sarah discuss ivory-tower management concerns while blithely ignoring the cleaning lady in between them on the elevator.

Even better still are those moments when greed is simply allowed to hang in the air, unspoken, as the common motivator for every participant’s actions, from Tuld down to young Seth (Penn Badgley), whose persistent talk about his superiors’ exorbitant salaries reveals his own obsession. The insatiable hunger for money oozes out of Chandor’s methodical pans across efficient trading floors and the glittering NYC skyline, generating ominous tension as the story proceeds down a path as ugly as it is inexorable.

Chandor’s capable cast underplays with authenticity, allowing the tale’s new, dawning reality to wash over their characters in waves of fear, panic, resignation, and fury. The writer-director’s climactic hole-digging metaphor proves more than a tad heavy-handed, but, like much of Margin Call , it gets at fundamental truths about our recent financial troubles, built as they were on a speculative industry predicated on products of little physical reality. When Tuld asserts that money is “make believe,” and that he’ll endure because society’s rich-poor dynamics are immutable, he verbalizes, however bluntly, the film’s astute perspective on the egotism of corporate titans and the underlying abstractness of the businesses that made them modern kings.

By not working in tangibles, Margin Call ’s Wall Street cretins are free to concoct whatever rules they like, damn the peons who suffer. Chandor’s italicized lines of dialogue grate (Seth, looking over a rooftop edge: “It’s a long way down”), as does a crass attempt to court sympathy for Sam via a dying-dog device. Nonetheless, his solemn, clear-sighted film accurately avoids fantasyland boardroom heroism while lucidly assessing the indomitable persistence of unchecked greed, which—be it for status, clothes, cars, houses, or whores (Will giddily admits to spending $76,500 on them)—is presented as not just a cancer, but also, ultimately, a self-perpetuating prison.

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Movie Review | 'Margin Call'

Number Crunching at the Apocalypse

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By A.O. Scott

• Oct. 20, 2011

There have been reports of hurt feelings among the bankers and brokers who have been the focus of public ire and Occupy Wall Street protests. And it is true that those poor, hard-working souls have been demonized and caricatured. Surely the much-reviled 1 percent does not consist of plutocrats in top hats or predators in blue suits, but of human beings just like the other 99 percent of us, albeit with more money and perhaps more to answer for.

That, in a way, is the message of J. C. Chandor’s “Margin Call,” which does a great deal to humanize the authors — and beneficiaries — of the 2008 financial crisis. But the film, relentless in its honesty and shrewd in its insights and techniques, is unlikely to soothe the wounded pride of the actual or aspiring ruling class. It is a tale of greed, vanity, myopia and expediency that is all the more damning for its refusal to moralize.

There are no hissable villains here, no operatic speeches condemning or celebrating greed. Just a bunch of guys (and one woman, Demi Moore) in well-tailored clothes and a state of quiet panic trying to save themselves from a global catastrophe of their own making. Watching them going about their business, you don’t feel the kind of fury inspired by “Inside Job,” Charles Ferguson’s great muckraking documentary on the origins of the financial crisis, but rather a mix of dread, disgust, pity and confusion.

And also, above all, admiration for an extraordinary feat of filmmaking. It is hard to believe that “Margin Call” is Mr. Chandor’s first feature. His formal command — his ability to imply far more than he shows or says and to orchestrate a large, complex drama out of whispers, glances and snippets of jargon — is downright awe inspiring. The movie rarely leaves the Manhattan offices of the fictional investment bank ( loosely modeled on Lehman Brothers ) in which it takes place and limits its action, which consists mainly of phone calls and hurried meetings, to a frenzied 24-hour period. Within that narrow frame the gears of a complex narrative mesh with ravishing clockwork precision.

“Margin Call” is a thriller, moving through ambient shadows to the anxious tempo of Nathan Larson’s hushed, anxious score. It is also a horror movie, with disaster lurking like an unseen demon outside the skyscraper windows and behind the computer screens. It is also a workplace comedy of sorts. The crackling, syncopated dialogue and the plot, full of reversals and double crosses, owe an obvious debt to David Mamet’s profane fables of deal-making machismo. Hovering over all of it is the dark romance of capital: the elegance of numbers; the kinkiness of money; the deep, rotten, erotic allure of power.

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Margin Call Review

13 Jan 2012

107 minutes

Margin Call

At one point during the long night of the soul that makes up Margin Call, Jeremy Irons’ Tuld, the vampiric head of a tottering investment bank, observes, “There are three ways to make a living in this business: be first, be smarter or cheat.” A prescient mantra for the current business age, the purity of the sentiment encapsulates the scalpel-like precision that J. C. Chador’s debut picks over the carcass of modern greed. Part thriller, part horror, part workplace tragi-comedy, all cautionary tale, this is a sharp film about sharp men (and Demi Moore) in sharp suits that makes Wall Street: 2 look like amped-up panto.

With its study of bruising machismo in tight spaces revealed through vital verbiage, Margin Call owes more than a debt to David Mamet in general and Glengarry Glen Ross in particular. But Chandor’s dialogue has none of Mamet’s grandstanding. Instead, the talk is terse, but the coolness with which they discuss nuclear options — dump all their mortgage bundles before the market realises they’re worthless but risk ruining their credibility forever — rings frighteningly true.

Chandor’s screenplay charts Sullivan’s seismic findings up the company ladder, each embodied by a terrific performance; from cynical foot soldier (Paul Bettany) to head trader (Kevin Spacey) to potential fall gal (Demi Moore) to Irons’ CEO. This superb ensemble only get quietly fractious meetings and harried phone calls to establish character, but everyone registers. It is Zachary Quinto (adding another great logician to his CV) and Stanley Tucci who propel the first half, and Spacey and the charming-but-scary Irons who dominate the second. Spacey, in particular, is great, adding a gentility to his normal acid-smart persona — his grieving for his dying dog may be an obvious metaphor, but Spacey makes it affecting.

There is a nice running gag that the higher up the chain of command we go, the weaker their command of financial mumbo-jumbo is. As much as it is about finance, it is also great on office politicking, from the agonies of mass redundancies to the etiquette of corporate hierarchies. It doesn’t shy from exposing avarice and moral myopia but this neither condemns nor glorifies the barbarians. Instead it humanises them, to such an extent it might turn your hatred of the one per cent into pity.

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The Ending Of Margin Call Explained

The 2011 financial thriller "Margin Call” explores the origins of the 2007 to 2009 financial crisis. Caused in large part by the boom-and-bust of the U.S. housing market in the early-to-mid 2000s, as well as investment banks selling mortgage-backed securities, the "Great Recession" sank the world into the deepest economic catastrophe since the Great Depression from the 1920s to the 1940s. While Wall Street tumbled, Main Street reeled, with trillions of dollars in economic growth lost and millions losing not only their homes, but their jobs. The echoes of the crisis reverberated through people's lives for years; some never recovered.

"Margin Call" unfolds at an unnamed investment bank where, during a round of layoffs, a young analyst (Zachary Quinto) discovers the firm's risky trading has potentially led not only to the organization's demise, but to a potential market collapse. Over the course of 24 hours, the firm must decide how to proceed knowing there is no going back. "Margin Call" is a taut Wall Street drama that's not just about the numbers — it's also a story of the very human choices and circumstances that led to this economic and societal catastrophe. The conclusion of the film can't be understood by mere spreadsheets, and its characters' moral ambiguities live outside a financial algorithm. So let's explain the ending of "Margin Call" and explore how small choices can lead to big trouble.

What you need to remember about the plot of Margin Call

In "Margin Call," it's 2008 and a heavy round of layoffs is taking place at an unnamed investment bank. Head of risk management Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci) is fired, and as he's escorted from the building, Dale passes a flash drive of his work to young associate, Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto). He asks Sullivan to finish the work located on the drive, but Dale warns Sullivan to "be careful." Completing Dale's work that night, Sullivan discovers the bank is on an inevitable path to failure due to the firm's over-leveraged assets.

Sullivan, along with analyst Seth Bregman ( Penn Badgley ), trader Will Emerson (Paul Bettany), and Emerson's boss, Sam Rogers (Kevin Spacey), attend an emergency meeting with an executive team that includes Jeremy Cohen (Simon Baker) and Chief Risk Management Officer Sarah Robertson (Demi Moore). Cohen and Robertson conclude Sullivan's report checks out, but it's not a startling revelation to the higher-ups. Rather, it serves as a receipt for their knowingly risky behavior.

With the bank on the brink of ruin, CEO John Tuld (Jeremy Irons) is summoned to the office, and it's determined that a fire sale of the toxic assets will save the company. The liquidation sale risks the bank's industry reputation, the careers of its employees, and broader market stability. Tuld ultimately decides it's better for the firm to be the first to sell in order to survive a seemingly inevitable collapse of the financial market.

What happens at the end of Margin Call

At the end of the film, the firm moves forward with the fire sale. Despite his trepidations and knowing that it will destroy the careers of many of his employees, Rogers rallies his traders, and the firm successfully liquidates many of its assets. Many traders lose their jobs, including Bregman. Emerson, whose trading prowess we follow as the fire sale unfolds, makes the cut. Sullivan, a Ph.D.-level rocket scientist who is ambivalent about working at the firm, is promoted for his efforts and is now seen as a valuable asset to the firm's recovery.

The firm's management team doesn't fare much better. Dale, who was unceremoniously fired the day before, is all but forced back to work, his severance and benefits held hostage unless he comes back. His work uncovered the crisis, and the firm wants to keep him close. Robertson is pushed out by Tuld, made to publicly take responsibility for the firm's failure, but Cohen stays. While Rogers successfully commandeers the fire sale, he wants out of his job. He confronts Tuld, asking him how they messed up so badly. Tuld sees the day's events as just another moment in historic market volatility. For Tuld, money is merely an imaginary concept that keeps civilization in order. His firm survives the day, and Tuld is already focused on future potential profits from the downturn. Tuld wants Rogers to stay. Disillusioned but in need of the money, Rogers continues working at the firm.

Greed and success go hand in hand

At the firm, success depends on employees' ability to embrace their own greed and selfishness. Some, like Tuld and Emerson, rationalize their greed as a reaction to outside systems. Tuld believes that the markets can't be controlled, one simply reacts to them. Through this twisted logic, he is able to absolve himself of personal responsibility for the societal misery brought on by his choices. Tuld believes there are always winners and losers.

Emerson, meanwhile, justifies his work as merely giving people what they want. If they want to afford big houses and fancy cars, Emerson thinks, he's the one who moves the money to make it happen. Both men understand how their choices affect society but show little concern for any negative outcomes. Because in their minds, if they're not holding power or making money, then someone else will.

For other characters, their greed manifests in acts of quiet self-interest. When Rogers leaves the room when Cohen and Robertson discuss Sullivan's findings, he's asked to stay and possibly help in their predicament. Instead, he leaves, telling them that willful ignorance about the hard data and problems facing the company is how he's been at the firm so long. For Rogers, ignorance is not only bliss — it's a survival tactic. To Sullivan, his work at the firm is just numbers, and he's only there because of the good pay. Ironically, it's the openly money-obsessed Bregman, who, only when faced with his inevitable firing, thinks outside of himself and contemplates how the firm's actions will hurt regular people.

Why build bridges when investment banking pays so much better?

Many of the firm's employees didn't start their careers in finance, but enticed by the enormous payouts of investment banking, they ditched their more humble and noble work for Wall Street. Before joining the firm, Dale worked as an engineer. He tells Emerson about how he designed a bridge that saved drivers hours of their life commuting, thus improving their quality of life. Sullivan, a literal rocket scientist, works at the firm because, he says, it pays better than science.

Both Dale and Sullivan traded in their altruistic careers for well-paying positions at the firm but — at least for Dale — it has come at a high price. When Emerson tries to get Dale to return to the firm with promises of a big payday, Dale responds, "I've been paid enough already." He's been there, done that, and was fired unceremoniously after nearly 20 years on the job. He knows what his work has revealed about the firm and doesn't like it, and he laments the intangibility and uselessness of his work with the firm compared to his more civic-minded past career in engineering. Meanwhile, newbie Sullivan is rewarded with a promotion for completing Dale's work. While we understand possibilities that Dale has seemingly squandered for investment banking, Sullivan bolted for Wall Street early in his scientific career, so we don't know the scientific potential Sullivan abandoned by joining the firm. However, at the end of the movie when he is seated in the executive dining room, Sullivan's trepidatious glance at Rogers implies it's a lot.

What did senior leadership know before the meeting?

When an emergency meeting is called to pore over Dale's now-completed report, we assume it's to alert the executive team about potentially new, perilous information. Sullivan, Bregman, and Emerson are shocked by their findings and jump to warn senior leadership. Turns out, the senior leadership was already aware of the firm's troubles. During the meeting, Rogers whispers to Robertson that he warned her about potential trouble last year and that if she had listened to him, they wouldn't be in this position now. So not only did Dale know, but Rogers and Robertson did, too.

Later, when Cohen and Robertson speak alone, we learn that Cohen was also in on the information. They know consequences are in order and attempt to formulate a strategy as to how they will handle their boss, Tuld. It's not that they want to reveal insights to Tuld, but they want to manage him now that the report's findings are known. They're keeping no secrets from the CEO because Tuld knew about the toxic assets as well. Rogers acknowledges that Tuld is working with more information than he has, and when Tuld fires Robertson, she makes it clear that she, Cohen, and Tuld had some sort of pact around what they were doing. While the exact extent of their knowledge is never revealed, it's safe to say firm leadership had lots of information about their toxic position well before the movie takes place.

Dale and Robertson know the firm has the power

Eric Dale was merely doing his job by digging into the precarious trading practices of the firm, and for his efforts, he was laid off. Emerson implies his firing was at the hands of Sarah Robertson, and Dale clearly regrets that he went to her last year — but what for is not revealed. As he walks out of the building, Dale spots Robertson and confronts her. She doesn't deny his accusations that she had anything to do with his firing, and she walks into the building flustered. There's unspoken tension between Dale and Robinson, and soon we learn why.

With the emergency meeting well underway, it's revealed that Robertson and Cohen knew about the firm's risky trading practices, and now Dale's work (completed by Sullivan) has exposed them. Robertson wants assurance from Cohen that they will go down together, but he doesn't give it to her. When Tuld fires Robertson and asks her to take a public fall for the firm instead of Cohen, she reminds him that she warned both him and Cohen about the impending catastrophe. Tuld urges her not to protest the decision, and she reluctantly obeys. She eventually finds herself sequestered in the same room as Dale, who is now back with the firm after they threatened to mess with his severance package. Dale and Robertson are trapped by the firm, both literally and figuratively. The firm has the power, and feeling there's little they can do to fight back, Dale and Robertson accept their fates.

Rogers' dog days on Wall Street

Sam Rogers is a decades-long veteran of the firm, but the brutal inhumanity of his work is finally catching up with him. We meet Rogers as the firm conducts a massive layoff. Distraught, Rogers wipes away tears — not for the newly unemployed, but for his dying dog. Rogers has been through job loss cycles before, and he rallies those left with jobs with a polished, well-honed speech. It's rote work for Rogers. Later, as Sullivan works into the night completing Dale's work, Rogers is at the vet, consoling his sick chocolate lab. Others are hard at work in the office, but Rogers is the only character seen actively tending to his personal life.

At the end of the film, understanding the human toll of the fire sale he just facilitated, Rogers storms the executive dining room to tell Tuld he wants out of the firm. Tuld diffuses Rogers' rage by telling him how lucky he is to be working at the firm and that it's better than digging ditches. Rogers retorts, "And if I had, at least there'd be some holes in the ground to show for it." Ironically, the final scene of "Margin Call" takes place during the night in the front yard of Rogers' ex-wife, Mary (Mary McDonnell). Rogers, in his rolled-up dress shirt, digs a grave for his dog, Ella. Rogers indeed digs his ditch, but all he has to show for it is grief, loss, and suffering.

The real-life inspirations behind Margin Call's fictional bank

"Margin Call" takes place at a fictional, unnamed investment bank, but it's definitely inspired by true events. The subprime mortgage crisis crescendoed in September 2008, when Lehman Brothers filed for the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history, the same year the movie takes place. Writer and director J.C. Chandor, whose father worked on Wall Street, penned the script soon after Lehman Brothers' collapse. His story wasn't a specific indictment of one bank; rather, as he told The New York Times , the movie was meant to figure out "the decision-making process that got us into this mess."

The movie not only takes inspiration from Lehman Brothers but from some of its power players. There are parallels between former Lehman Brothers chief risk officer Madelyn Antoncic and "Margin Call's" Sarah Robertson. In an op-ed published by The New York Times , Antoncic wrote that she alerted leadership about their risk missteps but was dismissed. While Robertson says in the film that her warnings were expressed with "insufficient urgency," she acted in a manner similar to her real-life counterpart. But Robertson isn't the only character inspired by real people. John Tuld is a combination of former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain and Lehman Brothers head Dick Fuld. Fuld was pinpointed as a main instigator of the financial crisis, and it's safe to say that if the story of "Margin Call" had time to unfold, Tuld would have been considered in the same light.

What has the cast and crew of Margin Call said about the ending?

"Margin Call" boasts an all-star cast that was attracted to the film because it brought a human element to a very technical, and at times, hard-to-understand societal issue. Jeremy Irons said the film "clarifies what a lot of us sort of thought might have been happening, but didn't quite understand how it was happening and why it happened." He also said that when people finish "Margin Call," "They will understand how normal, pretty honest individuals got into this situation. How unregulated financial behavior [is something] we can't really have in society these days."

Other cast members have spoken about the film's ability to make complex financial issues simple for audiences to understand. Simon Baker said in an interview  that the film "in essence explained those things, but more in layman's terms and put it on a more human, hierarchical system so I can look at is as a layman." He said, "The script doesn't delve too much into the vernacular of that world." Paul Bettany has  commented on the moral ambiguity of "Margin Call," noting that the characters are not villains, rather they are merely acting on their capitalistic instincts that are aligned with the economic system in which they find themselves.

Margin Call's alternate ending

In an interview with ProPublica , writer and director J.C. Chandor shared that "Margin Call" could have had a very different ending from the final version. In 2009, financing the movie proved difficult, perhaps given its proximity to the crash itself. Chandor said money was available to produce the film but at a price: Chandor said he felt he could get financiers on board, but only if he provided them a Hollywood ending. Chandor said, "If Zachary Quinto's character had stood up and called in the SEC, and [Kevin] Spacey's character had been perp-walked out of the building à la [Oliver Stone's film "Wall Street"], I had a check to go make the movie. It was a very simple change at the end of the movie. It's often what happens with financiers that come on."

Chandor never said that he wrote this "alternate ending," nor did he suggest that such an ending was ever filmed. But it's clear that "Margin Call" could have been another typical Hollywood finance movie like "Wall Street" or "The Wolf of Wall Street" with an audience-pleasing ending, except Chandor stuck to his story. He shared, "I strongly, strongly felt that you did not get a systemic collapse where the tip of the sword of capitalism had to be socialized — which was of course what had just happened, where the government basically had to come in and take over the banking sector — you don't get that happening just on individual failure." Instead, the movie deliberately denies any one character hero status, choosing to examine the moral, ethical, and emotional dubiousness they face by working at the firm. Other films, like "The Big Short,"  have told stories about the financial crisis, but none have the unnerving ambiguity of "Margin Call."

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Review: Margin Call (2011)

Margin Call is a maddening film. It has commendable aspects, mostly on the performance side of things, but it ultimately doesn’t come close to adding up to a satisfying whole. While the all-star ensemble cast of veteran actors give it their best efforts, they can’t elevate a thinly developed script and wholly uncinematic direction.

The film follows an investment firm on the eve of the 2008 Wall Street collapse, and how one employee’s number crunching led them to realize that they the end was near. We then see them scrambling to gain control of the situation and preparing for the inevitable financial meltdown. The problem is, this collapse has come from the inside, not just miscalculated numbers, but rather through embezzlement and fraud. Egos are challenged, tempers flare, moral compasses are tested, and everything goes to hell in a hand basket.

On paper, this sounds like the formula for a thrilling, smart, engaging piece of filmmaking. Unfortunately, that is not the case at all. The screenplay does nothing to illuminate any of what is really going on, first and foremost because it fails to illuminate a single character beyond their lines of dialogue. We’re never given any insight into a single character’s motivations and inner-workings beyond where they stand ethically or financially. It makes for a completely uninteresting group of people that the audience won’t care about because everyone is a motivation zombie. Strong performances by Jeremy Irons and Kevin Spacey help give their characters a bit more depth, but they’re only able to do so much with what they’ve been given. Irons in particular stands out as the slimy no-nonsense CEO of the firm. One gets the sense he improvised a good deal of his dialogue, because it seems like he’s from a different film most of the time. All of the complex business lingo in the world can’t save a script that isn’t interested in developing anything or anyone beyond faux intellectual complexity.

The other biggest issue is that the film doesn’t have a cinematic bone in its body. Normally, a talking heads film would be fine as long as it succeeded as visual storytelling. Films like The Social Network and The Insider succeed at this because even amidst all the talking heads, they follow the rules of show, don’t tell. Unfortunately, Margin Call fails to do this, and becomes nothing more than thinly developed characters we don’t care about thrown into a situation with no context or intrigue. It takes more than great performances from Jeremy Irons and Kevin Spacey to make a film. It needs a compelling story with compelling characters, and Margin Call is disappointingly devoid of all these.

50/100 - All of the complex business lingo in the world can’t save a script that isn’t interested in developing anything or anyone beyond faux intellectual complexity.

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Margin Call

Review by brian eggert november 8, 2011.

Margin Call takes place in 2008, as our economy dangles on the edge of a volcano. Written and directed by first-timer J.C. Chandor, the independently produced film does not tell a “true story” about what happened; rather, it fictionalizes a believable behind-the-scenes scenario without directly pointing fingers. The story concerns an analyst who discovers his brokerage firm’s upcoming losses go beyond their total market value. To save their butts, the company decides to unload their inventory of sub-prime mortgage holdings before their worthlessness becomes public knowledge, making a fortune as they betray their customers. Filled with convincing financial jargon delivered by the best ensemble cast you’re likely to see in 2011, the film belongs on a short list of good financial thrillers, including Oliver Stone’s Wall Street and James Foley’s film of David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross .

Referenced only as “The Firm,” the corporation at the film’s center begins its day by dropping eighty percent of its brokers in a mass layoff. The day is a stressful one, at the end of which the “survivors” celebrate. Earlier, longtime risk manager Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci) is walked out the door and, on his way, tells young analyst Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto) to look over his current project, and to “be careful” with what he finds. Sullivan stays late to review the numbers. When he realizes what he’s found, he calls his colleague Seth (Penn Badgley) and their boss Emerson (Paul Bettany) to look at the calculations. Before long, it’s midnight and Emerson’s boss Sam Rogers (Kevin Spacey) has been called in. Another couple of hours and Sam’s bosses (Simon Baker and Demi Moore) arrive and concur the numbers are correct. By four in the morning, CEO John Tuld (Jeremy Irons) lands on the roof via helicopter and asks Sullivan to explain what’s going on. “Speak to me as you would a child,” Tuld says, reminding audiences that executives are rarely as smart as their title suggests. And thus, finally, the audience can understand what everyone’s been talking about until now.

At this point, you’ll feel the sudden desire to purchase a Guy Fawkes mask and join those Wall Street protesters. Some consider the protesters anti-American or at least anti-Capitalism, but these days the two seem inseparable. They’re not angry about The American Way; they’re enraged by the greed fueling Wall Street, the inhumanity. This is a place where corporations service themselves for a profit, regardless of how it affects the world at large. Even in the face of disaster, Tuld (no doubt inspired by Lehman Brothers CEO Richard Fuld) thinks first about how to make as much money from what’s happening. Granted, it’s every business’ right to turn a profit, but there comes a point when your pursuit of revenue begins to destroy everything around you and, in the long term, means corporate (if not national) suicide. You’d think that with all the expensive education in attendance at these companies, someone would have been smart enough to grasp this. Alas, Gordon Gekko’s enduring motto, “Greed is good,” meant as an overstated but honest axiom in Wall Street , has been taken literally since its pronouncement, and Margin Call shows the result.

But I digress. Chandor’s onscreen assessment of these characters may feel more even-handed than one expects in troubled economic times. It’s quite realistic, thanks to the all-around strong performers who give human faces to businessmen who want nothing more than to make a buck (or a few million of them), fearing their superiors enough to suppress their reservations about company policy. Much like other financial thrillers of this sort, Chandor uses the illusory nature of money—that artificial thing that our society created to make our lives easier but instead dominates it—as an invisible device that drives all decisions. Quinto’s naïve young analyst questions whether or not his company has made the right choice, but it doesn’t matter, since the paychecks are good. Only Spacey’s 34-years-in character shows any true regret about the situation. Spacey’s character is further humanized by a subplot about his dying dog; we can’t help but feel sympathy for a man who cries at the idea of losing his best friend. Irons’ two or three scenes steal the film, however, as he’s so composed and cold; it’s his best performance in years. The cast overall is staggeringly good. Has a first-time director ever assembled such an impressive roster of talent?

Though fuelled by compelling dialogue—in particular two monologues, a cynical one from Bettany and a chilly one from Irons— Margin Call doesn’t have a style in the language itself. It’s not a film “about” dialogue, nor is it “about” the characters, strange as that sounds. Information is presented matter-of-factly, without involving backstories to artificially enhance what’s happening. This isn’t Money Never Sleeps , where the numbers are a device propelling a melodrama. Chandor instead lays out a potboiler where things look bad, get worse, and then boil over, giving way to a poignant and somber aftermath. It’s a wonderfully acted story that puts what happened in the fall of 2008 into perspective, taking us behind corporate walls where everything hums with computer monitors and the chatter of desperate brokers, and then into board rooms where suits find themselves speechless at their company’s forecast. And afterward, we have a better understanding of the apathy that permeated our economy’s ongoing crisis, which, depending on your outlook, either focuses or alleviates your anger over the situation.

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Margin Call (2011)

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Set in the high-stakes world of the financial industry, Margin Call is an entangling thriller involving the key players at an investment firm during one perilous 24-hour period in the early stages of the 2008 financial crisis. When an entry-level analyst unlocks information that could prove to be the downfall of the firm, a roller-coaster ride ensues as decisions both financial and moral catapult the lives of all involved to the brink of disaster.

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Margin Call is brilliant.

Finance movies rule. But this isn’t a finance movie. It’s really a movie about humans working within a massive system that makes some rich, many poor, and cannot be stopped. You could take all financial jargon out, and the bones of the movie are how people and personalities clash, work together, make decisions, grieve, resent, and ultimately begrudgingly accept circumstances.

It’s amazing that this script didn’t get overcooked into just another “Us vs. Them” story, and instead turned into a nuanced movie with a heap of reality.