on Inside Job

Details

Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Monday, 24 January 2011 02:26

Written by Jack Angstreich

Inside Job, directed by Charles Ferguson, is another clever, engaging, and entertaining documentary of no especial aesthetic merit but is a well-crafted account of the recent financial crisis.

Much of the film is devoted to exposition and it thus eschews the gonzo mode of Michael Moore even as it features several confrontational interviews where the subjects are greatly embarrassed by the questions posed to them.

The film is especially noteworthy in at least two respects. First, Ferguson devotes several minutes to revealing the intellectual and ethical bankruptcy of academic economics. Second, the film doesn't shrink from exposing the collusion of the Democratic Clinton and -- especially and remarkably -- the Obama Administrations with the moneyed interests that precipitated the crisis.

The main weakness here is the final, naive exhortation for government reform, where everything preceding this in the film suggests that such a possibility is purely utopian.

• < Prev
• Next >