By
Inside Job
 is a madcap comedy with plenty of romance, gaffes, and no-holds-barred action and adventure!
Oh. Excuse me. It’s actually an exhaustive, sobering look at the greed that caused the great economic crisis in 2008, along with its effects on our culture and the world at large.
Charles Ferguson is not Michael Moore, and that is Inside Job‘s greatest asset. Not that I have a problem with Moore’s influential brand of sassy, heartstring-pulling manipulation, it’s just that this is a subject much better suited to Ferguson’s more detail oriented, analytical stylings. His previous film was the fantastic No End in Sight (which unfortunately got a bit lost in the Iraq War Documentary shuffle), and Inside Job may be even better.
With surgical precision, Ferguson shows that the crisis was ostensibly perpetrated, at the expense of the American people, so that a select few could become even richer. He does this without oversimplifying, and without dumbing anything down for the sake of entertainment (not that the film isn’t entertaining, quite the opposite). Well, there is simplification of a sort; helpful animated graphics assist knuckleheads like myself in understanding the extremely complex economic concepts behind these events. Indeed, Jonathan Gershon…
Inside Job is a madcap comedy with plenty of romance, gaffes, and no-holds-barred action and adventure!
Oh. Excuse me. It's actually an exhaustive, sobering look at the greed that caused the great economic crisis in 2008, along with its effects on our culture and the world at large.
Charles Ferguson is not Michael Moore, and that is Inside Job's greatest asset. Not that I have a problem with Moore's influential brand of sassy, heartstring-pulling manipulation, it's just that this is a subject much better suited to Ferguson's more detail oriented, analytical stylings. His previous film was the fantastic No End in Sight (which unfortunately got a bit lost in the Iraq War Documentary shuffle), and Inside Job may be even better.
With surgical precision, Ferguson shows that the crisis was ostensibly perpetrated, at the expense of the American people, so that a select few could become even richer. He does this without oversimplifying, and without dumbing anything down for the sake of entertainment (not that the film isn't entertaining, quite the opposite). Well, there is simplification of a sort; helpful animated graphics assist knuckleheads like myself in understanding the extremely complex economic concepts behind these events. Indeed, Jonathan Gershon deserves special recognition for creating graphics that make this all make sense to someone who mostly slept through 10th grade econ class.
In fact, when Inside Job occasionally does slip into Moore-like techniques — most noticeably in a montage set to “Taking Care of Business” — it feels awkward and out of place. The montage is humorous and helpful in communicating information quickly and compellingly, but it does feel a bit cheap compared to everything else in the picture. And besides, haven't we all heard “Taking Care of Business” enough in our lifetimes? I'll take the talking heads of financial experts over that song any day.
Guiding us through these talking heads is Charles Ferguson, the character off screen often speaking for the audience. As the film goes on there are increasing instances where Ferguson is compelled to (rightly) interrupt his interviewees, expressing bewilderment or indignation at the BS they're attempting to spit forth. When he hits them with facts that are impossible to disprove, all impeccably researched, often they must pause for a few moments to collect themselves. It's in these scenes where the film is best at showing its sardonic wit, and it's satisfying to watch his subjects squirm when they realize just how sharp he is.
Unlike a lot of similar political documentaries, Inside Job doesn't make much of an attempt to tack on a hopeful note before the credits roll. This makes the film feel all the more honest, and terrifying as well. We know these people have done wrong, we know they've essentially gotten away with it, but what can we really do when the whole system has become thoroughly corrupted? A particularly wrenching sequence near the end shows that Barack Obama, a beacon of hope for many, has filled his cabinet with many of the very people responsible for this crisis in the first place. Aw, crap.
Overall Score: 8.00 – Great. (Movies that score between 8.00 and 8.50 are great representations of their genre that everyone should see in theaters on opening night.)
Inside Job just barely edges out Casino Jack and the United States of Money as the best political documentary of the year. See both, learn a lot, be angry.
