THE BIG SHORT

Adam McKay and Charles Randolph's film about what led to the financial crisis of 2008 raises the question of how something so exhilarating could also be so depressing. Running a hundred miles an hour, and managing to capture the vast complex of relationships that constitute what cannot really be called the financial services industry (more exploitation than service), it's as intense a thriller as we've seen in a while. It's also profoundly moral, without being moralistic - the impact of selfishness is conveyed with a few brief shots of foreclosed houses and people living outside, a few sentences such as "40,000 people die for every 1% increase in unemployment". Steve Carell, Brad Pitt, Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling, Marisa Tomei and others make such everymen and women of their roles that it's difficult for most of us to deny our shared complicity in the choices that nearly collapsed the world economy.