‘Inside Job’ looks at Wall Street malfeasance with a sharp eye

By John Soltes

Charles Ferguson’s Inside Job serves as a scary epilogue of what happened to the world economy and a frightening prologue of what is to come. Detailing the events that led to the current recession, the documentary pulls no punches and lets no one off the hook. According to the film, this economic disaster was calculated and should lead to criminal culpability. After watching, it’s hard to disagree.

The movie is perhaps the single most effective testament of how convoluted and nefarious American capitalism has become.

Piecing together interviews and helpful diagrams, Inside Job begins by looking at the historical groundwork that led to the real estate boom of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Along the way, presidents and pundits are portrayed as willing accomplices. Ferguson is setting us up for a crime scene, identifying the variables and noting the underlying currents.

The middle chunk of the film is the dirty, nasty, downright villainous circumstances of an economic machine run amok. This is where Inside Job could have become so complex that it would have felt more like reading a textbook than watching an easy-to-comprehend documentary. Thankfully, Ferguson keeps everything in order and digestible. The crazed web that is the world economy never gets away from the director. He makes it his mission to understand it and describe it, without talking down to the audience.

Diagrams and computer imagery are used to perfect effect, letting one follow the progression of doom. Although I’m still a little lost on what exactly a CDO is, and how derivatives brought us down, I have a much better comprehension now that I’ve seen Inside Job.

The interviews are all solid testimonies from people who seemingly predicted the recession and from those who openly facilitated it along the way. One of the most damning pieces of evidence is Ferguson’s interviews with academic economists who were seemingly paid off to write favorable papers. Some of these professors would do well to look up the definition of a conflict of interest. (Luckily, the director refrains from becoming a microphone-in-your-face Michael Moore, but there are a few great gotcha moments.)

The movie is as much about the interviews portrayed during its 120 minutes as it is about the interviews that Ferguson is unable to capture. Time and time again, the most crucial people who helped bring about the economic collapse (the Alan Greenspans of America) are left out of the documentary, with a simple note that this particular person declined an interview request. After a while, the audience realizes that the people with the most power are also the ones evading the inspecting lens of the camera.

The documentary smartly doesn’t look at the victims. There are few “woe is me” interviews. Instead, like a prosecutor, Ferguson goes for the throat and tries to attain accountability.

When future generations look back at this current recession, they will likely read our newspaper articles, examine the presidential policies and initiatives and probably flip through statistics about sub-prime mortgages and foreclosures. But to learn of the criminality that took place in the last few years (notice how I didn’t use the word mistakes), future generations ought to pick up a copy of Inside Job. It’ll scare them to death.

Inside Job

2010

Directed by Charles Ferguson

Narrated by Matt Damon

Running time: 120 minutes

Bubble score: 4 out of 4

Click here to purchase Inside Job on DVD.