Banking is complicated. This was the biggest hurdle facing ""Inside Job,"" the comprehensive documentary breakdown of what has come to be known as the ""Great Recession"" of 2008. The film has an hour and a half to try and explain the largest economic debacle of the generation in a simple, movie-friendly fashion, and that is no easy task. But somehow it is successful. If only director Charles Ferguson could have managed to make the movie interesting as well.
Unfortunately, ""Inside Job"" suffers from a little too much educational preachiness. It too often starts to sound like a high school business teacher, albeit an effective one. Ferguson and his filmmaking crew are able to better explain exactly what it is Bear Stearns does––er, did––than any cable news network talking head. But while doing so, ""Inside Job"" begins to feel somewhat like a textbook instead of a movie, which caused me personally to nod off at least a couple of times.
This is partly due to the film failing to capture the same thrilling vibe of past business exposé documentaries such as ""Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room."" It would help if ""Inside Job"" had some villainous characters to anchor it, but it drops the ball here. Just because a film is based on fact doesn't mean the audience doesn't need characters to connect with. ""Enron"" provided us with the evil energy overlords of Ken Lay and Jeffery Skilling. All ""Inside Job"" gives us are a bunch of shiny glass buildings serving as monoliths for the nefarious cabal that is the American financial industry. ""Inside Job"" wants you to be angry, but it doesn't provide any lightning rod to be angry at.
Even more problematic is that the goal of ""Inside Job,"" to induce anger in the populace, is already done for it. Rage directed toward Wall Street is nothing new, and ""Inside Job"" is hopping on that bandwagon a couple of years too late. The entire premise of the film, from its rather fact-challenged assertions about United States economic success to its moralist narration from Matt Damon, is targeted mostly at building fury, not a reasonable call to action. The best message Ferguson can muster is that we probably shouldn't have crooks running our financial system. He doesn't craft any sort of take-home message his audience can carry with them as a personal mission. Even ""An Inconvenient Truth,"" a film that suffered from many of the same anger-mongering and preachy flaws, gave movie-goers some tangible things they could do in order to bring about change. ""Inside Job"" just offers vitriol.
That's not to say ""Inside Job"" doesn't have any engrossing stories to tell. Its overarching narrative of financial destruction is one of the most important cautionary tales of this past decade, of course. And Ferguson even throws in a decent amount of guilty-pleasure vice, taking some time to detail the sex and coke parties that became a regular staple of Wall Street banking executives. These high points just don't add up to a fully engrossing feature, and in a year chock full of excellent documentaries such as ""Waiting for ‘Superman,'"" ""Restrepo"" and ""The Tillman Story,"" it is rather surprising that Ferguson's film is getting as much critical praise as it has received. Instead, it would be much better off following in the footsteps of Bear Stearns: vanishing into the ether, only to fade away behind its superior peers.
