FILM

USA 2011 107 mins Dir: J.C. Chandor Starring: Kevin Spacey, Zachary Quinto, Paul Bettany, Stanley Tucci, Simon Baker, Demi Moore, Jeremy Irons

Initially, first-time writer/director J.C. Chandor's 'Margin Call' seems like just another entry in the burgeoning recession genre. As teams of power-dressed downsizing zombies, all apparently modelled on Anna Kendrick's character in 'Up in the Air', sweep through an anonymous office building, Stanley Tucci is summoned to a meeting room, briskly fired and hustled out of his workplace of 19 years. But Tucci and his colleagues aren't blameless ordinary working stiffs. They're the bastards who caused all the mess in the first place. And 'Margin Call' seems to be asking us to feel sympathy for some of them. To use that most odious of neologisms: that's a big ask.

It's 2008 and this is a New York investment firm where Mr. Spock himself (Zachary Quinto, for it is he) has spotted the lack of logic underpinning complex financial deals. His immediate superior Paul Bettany then summons Horrible Boss Kevin Spacey, who in turn summons even more horrible boss Simon Baker and finally steely CEO Jeremy Irons. Frantic meetings continue through the night as the suits try to figure out a way off saving their skins by offloading the toxic debt.

Chandor has certainly assembled a high-powered cast to deliver self-serving monologues and hurl financial jargon at one another in this claustrophobic chamber piece. (Irons speaks for us all when he seeks clarity by telling Quinto: "Talk as you might to a young child or a golden retriever.") But while Spacey is posited unconvincingly as the movie's rudimentary conscience largely because - aww! - he loves his dying dog, Bettany's arrogant, cynical, overpaid asshole is far more believable. Asked whether he's concerned about the impending meltdown's impact on normal people, he sneers: "F*ck normal people." (Robin Askew)

Website www.margincallmovie.com/

Opens: January 13

Copyright Robin Askew 2012