Too Big To Fail

Too Big to Fail effectively follows the money while humanizing most of the moneychangers.

The sheer, cynical heartlessness of nearly everyone on-screen--from a wonderfully blunt Tony Shalhoub as Morgan Stanley's John Mack to Topher Grace as a calculating Paulson aide--is both dismaying and riveting.

Whether you agree or disagree, the film sorts out a complex situation in simple and human terms.

HBO's Too Big to Fail is mesmerizing and, if you can call watching an economics lesson from hell entertaining, then yes, it's entertaining.

Despite the complexity of the subject, it's impossible not to get the gist of what went on in 2008, thanks to the focus on the players and the actors who do the playing.

This is undeniably an important story, told in a relatively no-nonsense fashion, about a complex set of events that even people who watch PBS' "Frontline" regularly may still be flummoxed by. And it's one we really do need to understand. As boardroom dramas go, "Too Big to Fail" is bigger on intrigue--and backbiting--than "Celebrity Apprentice." And, yes, it's a disaster movie. I just hope you're not expecting special effects. Or a Hollywood ending.

Given the topic, Too Big to Fail might seem like a movie made only for policy wonks but even if you don't understand the finer points of monetary policy, it's still entertaining because it features that great equalizer in American popular culture: Wealthy, well-heeled people behave like jerks, allowing the less wealthy a certain superior satisfaction.

Too Big To Fail uses every cinematic trick in the book, but ultimately succeeds because we know that the danger was real.

While the tale is not always exciting and the parade of suits grows blurry at times, other times Fail takes on the urgency of an imminent nuclear disaster. Shop talk, cutting quips and appropriately ominous music add atmospherics.

An entertaining if slightly dry account of the 2008 government bailout of the financial industry, as viewed over the shoulder of then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, whose agony is deftly conveyed by William Hurt.