Too big to fail on HBO

[Borderline Divine]

Anyone else watched this? Its excellent, and if even half true, chilling. Also Paul Giamotti is a dead ringer for Ben Bernanke and William Hurt does Hank Paulson quite well too.

[PaloAltoCougar]

I watched this over the weekend and really enjoyed it, even though it brought back the very deep dread and sense of foreboding I had in the fall of 2008. I was surprised by the number of great actors (and some fine performances) in the movie. I enjoyed this more than Inside Job, which was also good. From the couple of books and many articles I've read about the events, I think HBO did a nice job with this.

One minor line I enjoyed: at the worst stage of the meltdown, a couple of key players are walking in for a summit meeting, and one of them says something like: "I don't think I can take much more of this." The other responds: "Come on, you just got out of a Mercedes and you're walking into the Federal Reserve; it's not like you climbed out of a Higgins Boat on Omaha Beach."

[LA Ute]

I saw some of it while in a hotel last week. Looked good. Does it just tell the story or does it take sides?

[PaloAltoCougar]

I saw some of it while in a hotel last week. Looked good. Does it just tell the story or does it take sides?

It wasn't as argumentative as, say, Inside Job. In fact, Hank Paulson (well played by William Hurt) and Ben Bernanke (Paul Giamatti), come off rather sympathetically. The film only touches on the root causes of the mess (lax lending practices, easy Fed money, nonexistent regulation, the CDO/derivative mess, etc.), and focuses more on "Okay, we've got a mess on our hands. We can talk later about how we got here, but unless we act now, we're going to have a financial collapse far worse than the Great Depression."

James Woods' Paul Fuld (Lehman's head) is a total jerk, though.