‘The Big Short’ has fun with fraud: 3.5 stars

“The Big Short” is one angry movie. Angry at bankers who knew they were backing specious loans in the months leading up to 2008’s housing market collapse. Angry at the previous administration for jumping into bed with a system it was supposed to regulate. Angry at Miami strippers who buy five homes because they got such a good deal.

Hard to believe a film with so much targeted venom is helmed by director Adam McKay, best known for haywire Will Ferrell comedies such as “Anchorman” and “Talladega Nights.” It shows what the filmmaker can accomplish when he has a real screenplay to work with and not just improv-spawned hijinks.

His film focuses on the swirling maelstrom of ignorance and deception orchestrated by the one-percenters responsible for the global financial crisis. It arrives two months after “99 Homes,” a little-seen gem released last October that examines the intimate fallout from the housing collapse on several victims trapped in the other 99 percent.

Both films are among the year’s best. They would make quite a Netflix double feature some day.

“The Big Short” depicts the complex events leading to the meltdown in fresh, eye-catching ways. At times in this comic/tragic biography, celebrities show up as themselves to explain key concepts. Chef/TV host Anthony Bourdain addresses the camera directly when comparing collateralized debt obligation (CDO) to restaurants making stew with the seafood they don’t sell the previous day.

“It’s not old fish; it’s a whole new thing,” he says.

As much as the film stretches to illustrate the ordeal, the story really centers on three teams of monetary geniuses who figure out that the housing market will soon crumble — and perhaps they can capitalize on it.

“A few outsiders and weirdos saw what was coming,” says smarmy Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling), a former Deutsche Bank trader who serves as the initial narrator, bringing you into the cloistered world of high finance and low accountability. An errant phone call tips off punchy money manager Mark Baum (Steve Carell), whose digging reveals an industry far more corrupt than he’d imagined.

Vennett persuades Baum to partner up: “I’m standing in front of a burning home, and I’m offering you fire insurance.”

Meanwhile, two Wall Street wannabes (Finn Wittrock and John Magaro) realize that controlling a measly $30 million won’t place them in the same league as their billionaire competitors. But their math skills prove superior, and together with a paranoid retired trader (Brad Pitt, also serving as a producer), they bet against a stabilized market.

Finally, Dr. Michael Burry (Christian Bale playing one of the few individuals not shielded by a pseudonym) surfaces as the true outsider/weirdo. A hedge fund manager with a glass eye, no fashion sense and an affinity for heavy metal, he wagers more than a billion dollars on red when everyone assures him the economy will stay in the black.

McKay and co-writer Charles Randolph transform the 2010 Michael Lewis book “The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine” into a lively cinematic happening. Zooming camerawork, fourth-wall breaks, video montages, multiple narrators, nervy editing — this is hardly the stagebound approach taken by 2011’s fine “Margin Call” that originally plumbed the topic.

Sure, it’s frequently quite glib. The movie becomes as aloof as its characters, often taking you out of the moment. But as the scale of the misfortune unfolds, key individuals begin to understand the human costs. As does the audience.

Carell, playing a selfish boss who claims, “I am happy when I am unhappy,” riffs on a cannier variation of bumbling Michael Scott from “The Office.” Yet there’s something magnetically persuasive about his performance as he gets further floored by each new capital depravity.

He eventually delivers an enthralling speech that echoes Gordon Gekko in “Wall Street” — only his buzzword is “fraud” not “greed.”

Likewise, “The Big Short” may indulge in its wild irreverence a little too greedily. But it’s no fraud.

This story was originally published December 22, 2015 at 1:00 AM with the headline "‘The Big Short’ has fun with fraud: 3.5 stars."