(2012)
Gimlet-eyed Richard Gere, sans hamster, delivers a typically
focused performance as a hedge fund manager whose professional and personal
lives catch up with him. As usual, the actor is given to a mildly constipated
performance; you’re never quite sure if he’s a master of subdued underplaying
(read, stiff) or simply bored with the whole thing. But those tiny eyes ensure
that he can never simply be a nice guy. Nicholas Jarecki’s film slots
comfortably into the small financial crisis subgenre, but he disappointingly
favours narrative fireworks over literate analysis.
It’s not that there’s anything very wrong in having a
traditional suspense structure to hang his tale on; a determined detective (Tim
Roth) investigates the scene of an auto accident Gere has deserted and
attempted to cover up (he leaves his dead girlfriend in the car, desperate to
preserve the secrecy of his affair from his family and to ensure that the
projected sale of his firm to a big bank goes ahead). The problem is that the
thriller element is only so-so at best, deriving its tension from oh-so
familiar plot developments and interrogations (knowing that Jarecki was
inspired by the De Niro-Pacino diner scene in Heat only serves to highlight how far short of a real master class
he falls here). By the time a prosecution is hanging on a piece of very
obviously manufactured evidence, we’ve long since started to call into question
the director’s choices.
Jarecki, as first time writer-director (he also furnished the screenplay for the lousy Bret Easton Ellis adaptation The Informers), does a better job as director. He shoots clearly and precisely, and has a firm grip on the trajectory of his narrative. Jarecki’s parents worked in the investment field, meaning that he’s drawing on what he knows, so it’s a little disappointing he doesn’t develop this world more fully. We learn early on that Gere has hidden a bad investment, and that he’s attempting to keep things fudged for as long as it takes the deal to go through. But Jarecki consistently soft-pedals the intricacies of the finance world, perhaps fearful that he will lose his audience.
Margin Call had
the confidence to get down to the nuts and bolts of the economic crisis. Gere’s
Bernie Madoff with a twinge of conscience is consistently much too filtered
through his domestic and legal problems for the exploration to be other than
oblique. Jarecki has loaded the dice dramatically, and it has the effect of
taking the weight off what Gere actually does for a living. It’s just some
dodgy finance stuff; that’s all we really need to know. Added to that, his
family hold key positions with the firm so when the truth comes out it becomes
about the devastating effect this has on his daughter (Brit Marling); meaty for
the actors but a cop out for the subject matter. Jarecki chooses to conclude business
in the same manner, further blunting any possibilities of commentary on the
capitalist machine.
There’s an expectedly fine turn from Susan Sarandon as
Gere’s wife and a great one from Nate Parker as the young man Gere calls when
he’s in a straight. This is actually a strong plot thread, Gere willing to use
and manipulate the only black guy he knows (as Parker puts it) in order to get
his own way. The problem is that it further lends weight to the feeling that
Jarecki’s world is a fiction, led by plot contrivance rather than substance.
Still, it’s fun to see Jimmy Grant (Angel from The Rockford Files) as Gere’s attorney.
I’m sure Jarecki will pay off on the promise he shows here in due course. He does seem to have a slightly inflated opinion of his talents, if the end result is anything to go by (he was such a whizz kid prodigy that he advised on computer hacking on Hackers, don’t you know). And resisting the urge to compare himself to Orson Welles might be wise. But if he can eschew storylines beholden to over-calculated dramatics he could come up with something special.
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