Inside Job

Charles Ferguson, who also directed Iraq war exposé No End in Sight, is a merciless filmmaker. And Inside Job is ruthless in its hunt for culprits in the global financial crisis. This is a docbuster that is less concerned with cinematic flair, unlike Ferguson's more showy contemporaries Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock, and deals instead in cold hard facts. Over the course of the film Ferguson systematically seeks out and vilifies the people responsible for the economic heist and it's a very gratifying ride.

Inside Job picks apart the problem at every level, from the Clinton and Bush administrations' self-interested policymaking, to the collapse of global financial services firms like Lehman Brothers, to sub-prime lending and the subsequent mortgage crisis that rotted the American property market. Ferguson makes the economic nitty gritty easy to comprehend, from the Iceland economic model that opens the film to the simple metaphors used to illustrate the debacle.

The film's focus does waver slightly in parts, moving away from the central investigation to more sordid tangential issues. Bank executives' visits to prostitutes and strip clubs are merely a seedy aside and the vulgar Hamptons montages add nothing to the documentary's argument. The real tension of the film comes from the interview with talking heads. Ferguson's unwavering approach to questioning his subjects is thrilling. Men that have lied and cheated on the grandest of scales come completely undone by his pragmatic style, coming across as squirming buffoons.

Ferguson shows us a banking industry that is so inherently corrupt that, even after the worst possible collapse, has seen no movement towards restructure. All the bank executives walked away from the collapse with their salaries intact, no one was prosecuted and the Obama government has re-appointed many of the key players responsible for the collapse. While it's satisfying to look back with Ferguson as he nails the miscreants, at the end of they day it's looking forward that's the real challenge.

Extras Making-of featurette; deleted scenes

Sony Home Entertainment, (PG) $39.95

Buy it now on iTunes

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