Filled with wonderful actors and an interesting directing style that periodically addresses the 4th wall, this informative biographical film manages to have a little bit of everything that appeals to me in films: Some comedy, actual real-life information including a big corruption reveal, and some really great storytelling.
I absolutely love Carell in serious roles and he is one of the main people that this film focuses on. Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling and of course Brad Pitt are not slouches in the acting world either - so we have a very good lineup for this film.
The story focuses on the financial crisis that the United States (and the world) experienced in 2007 - 2008 and focuses on how it was created almost entirely by the housing "bubble" that this film seeks to show that not only did the mortgage industry know about this, but they may have did it on purpose for their own gains. Billions upon billions of normal working people were completely screwed over by this fiasco and a few people comprised of financial guys with information on the "inside" made bets called "shorts" (which I was very unaware of before watching this film) that were basically gambling on the fallout of the economy.
[source](https://www.truthdig.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/bigshortreview_798.jpg)This film makes you angry if you are someone who is a bit distrusting of the government and banking industries because during the film and the explanation of actual real-life events show that the average Joe taxpayer footed the bill for this blunder and the people who were responsible for it occurring in the first place ended up getting bonuses. You don't need to be terribly old to remember this happening but trust me, it was an astronomical amount of money and these lenders got away with it almost entirely without penalty.
For me, the government bailout set a very dangerous precedent in the financial world: If you are big enough and can convince government officials that your industry is essential to the economy, then you get to do whatever you want, make yourself rich as S**T on very risky gambles and if you are ever wrong, the average taxpayer who didn't even have anything to do with it, has to pony up for the bill.
The fact that Christian Bale plays Michael Burry, an M.D. who just happens to be a financial genius that enjoys really aggressive metal was just icing on the cake for me personally.
This might be one of the most important films that has been released in the past 10 years, if not a greater time-span than that. It makes me believe that the governments of the world are even more evil than I thought before because almost no one talked about this very massive problem with society for very long after the devastating events of 2008.
It ended up winning a tremendous amount of awards an it definitely deserves them, if not even more.
