67,713 views
Margin Call (2011) About the film: Every person has their own risk limit, but Wall Street businessmen have virtually no limit, otherwise they would not be able to turn around multi-billion dollar deals. John Tuld adheres to the three rules of big business - be first, be smarter, or cheat. Plot: The film tells the story of one of the large American investment banks (the prototype of which is Lehman Brothers), which is on the verge of a financial crisis and bankruptcy. The film takes place over 24 hours, during which the bank's employees are trying to find a way out of the developing crisis situation. The bank is suddenly downsizing. The just-fired head of the risk management department, Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci), before leaving, hands over a flash drive with unfinished calculations to one of the department's employees, Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto). Peter stays after work to study and finalize Eric's research. A few hours later, he discovers the horrifying facts - the risk on the mortgage-backed securities in the bank's portfolio has reached a level where a further decline in the price of these securities will lead to losses comparable to the value of all the investment bank's assets. Peter calls junior risk analyst Seth Bregman (Penn Badgley) and senior trader Will Emerson (Paul Bettany) to the office to tell them about this. A few hours later, after midnight, the entire top management gathers at the bank. At two o'clock in the morning, a meeting begins about these "toxic assets". In total, there are more than $8 trillion in such securities on the American market (half of the US national debt). It is absolutely obvious that a sudden one-time sale of the entire package of these securities by a large American bank will inevitably lead to a collapse of the US stock market. Despite this, the head of the bank decides to immediately begin selling the "toxic assets" in order to save his capital. By lunchtime the next day, the bank's traders have managed to get rid of these assets - hastily, aggressively, at huge discounts. Before the strong downward trend in the stock market that they actually caused with their actions, and which, in turn, gave impetus to the largest financial crisis of the 21st century, begins to develop.