The Real Wall Street Movie

[caption id="attachment_3882" align="alignleft" width="378" caption="Kevin Spacey in Margin Call"][/caption]

First time writer/director J.C. Chandor's new movie Margin Call takes a look at a Wall Street firm in the midst of panic and unease. The movie, which was on a $3.5 million budget, has some well-known actors, including Oscar winner Kevin Spacey. If you're looking for a more realistic movie on Wall Street, then be sure to see this. Michael M. Grynbaum of The New York Times disccuses further in his article Wall Street, With Calm, Not Hysteria:

ON the day that Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, shattering confidence in the banking system and sending the stock market into a tailspin, the trading floor at the firm’s Midtown Manhattan headquarters appeared surprisingly calm. Bankers conferred in whispers; some quietly fiddled with résumés. The only obvious signs of tumult were the television news trucks parked outside.

I happened to be there that morning in 2008, not as a banker but a trespasser: a reporter covering Wall Street, I had sneaked into the building with the help of a trusted source. As I avoided security guards and surreptitiously filed reports from a men’s-room stall, what struck me most was the absence of panic, the strange stillness that seemed to permeate the place: the melancholy silence of a once-great global corporation staring into the void.

Wall Street movies, which must find entertainment in ticker symbols and balance sheets, tend to fall somewhat short of Wall Street reality, where millions of dollars can be won and lost with all the pomp of a mouse click. Filmmakers like Oliver Stone and others have tried to inject a palpable sense of the underlying stakes. Think of the mano a mano Blue Star Airlines fight in Mr. Stone’s “Wall Street,” the glamorous merger in “Working Girl,” or the commodities frenzy at the end of “Trading Places.”

Read more at The New York Times