BEFORE: Yep, it's Robert De Niro week - again - as his credits still keep building up, he had a busy year with "The Irishman" and "Joker" getting released in 2019, but there's an opportunity here for me to dive back to the little films that sort of fell through the cracks for me in years past, like yesterday's film "Everybody's Fine" and this one, and tomorrow's.
THE PLOT: The fall of Bernie Madoff, whose Ponzi scheme robbed $65 billion from unsuspecting victims, the largest fraud in U.S. history.
AFTER: Like "Hustlers", here's another film that shines a spotlight on another set of victims of the 2008 U.S. financial crisis - namely, the Madoff family. Because if the economy hadn't tanked, then investors in Madoff's fraudulent investment companies wouldn't have started to cash out their portfolios, and then his whole scheme might not have been exposed, it could have just gone on forever and he never would have been caught, right? Umm, I should point out that I'm not an expert on financial matters.
The problem, as I understand it, was that he kept bringing in new investors and used their money to pay returns to the earlier investors, which is apparently illegal. The origins of this method go all the way back to ancient Egypt, which is why it's called a "pyramid" scheme - this is how the Egyptian pharoahs raised enough money to have such enormous, elaborate tombs built for themselves. You couldn't just get a job hauling giant stones through the desert, a worker had to invest in the building by giving money to the foreman, and he gave money to the construction company, and he kicked up to the pharoah, and there you go. But back then this was perfectly legal, the Egyptians weren't as enlightened as we are now. Years later, though, I think they used a similar strategy to finance the construction of the Luxor Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.
Once the scheme was exposed, the media delighted in portraying Madoff as "evil", but was he? It almost feels like this film was sympathetic to his plight, because he took the fall and tried to make sure that none of the blame for his misdeeds fell on his wife and sons, and he ended up losing contact with all of them, and his sons probably paid a higher price than anyone else. Pundits wondered how they could work for their father and NOT know how the company was really being run, that all of the trades were fake, all of the records were fake, and so on. You really have to wonder if this is also what goes down in the Trump organization, like do we really believe that Don Jr. and Eric are capable of running a multi-faceted business? I bet if you gave them tasks similar to those seen on the old "Apprentice" show, these boneheads combined couldn't run a pizza shop or even a lemonade stand. By the same token, the Madoff sons either had to be complicit or ignorant, and I'm not sure which is worse.
Meanwhile, Papa Madoff apparently had no long-term plan for his sons to take over his company, in other words, he wasn't cluing them in on the (im-)proper way to run an investment firm, and told them not to ask any questions whenever they inquired. Similarly, there was no plan for who would take over the company if Bernie retired or died, and he fooled himself into believing that should the worst happen, his family would figure things out and still be taken care of, somehow. So it's not that the long-term plan wasn't viable, it's that there WAS NO long-term plan. Even when the early investors started to cash out, Madoff fooled himself into believing that enough money would come in to cover the company's losses, and everything would eventually work itself out.
But if you think about it, his company might have been in a better position than others, companies that lost everything in the 2008 financial crash. Since BLM Investments hadn't made any real trades, they hadn't made any BAD trades, either. If only he and his family hadn't bought so many expensive houses, cars and fancy watches, the company might have ridden out the storm. And the crash could have provided the perfect cover, as long as they were making stuff up, Madoff could have just told everyone that the company had invested in companies that failed in the crash, and then there would have been no obligation to give any money back. So it's not just that Madoff lied, rather he just told the WRONG lies - he kept telling every investor that their money was safe, that better opportunities were arising, and that the crash was a good time to double-down and invest MORE, when so many banks and investment firms were failing and in need of bailing out. So, ego, really - if he could have admitted a little bit of failure, fewer people would have been demanding his head on a pike. See? I'm a problem-solver, you can always count on me to figure a way out of a desperate situation, only nobody ever asks me, and I'm 10 or 12 years too late with the solution.
Also like "Hustlers", this film uses an interview conducted years later as the framing device to allow flashbacks to the earlier scenes - but unfortunately this one doesn't progress linearly through the past, so there's a lot of jumping around, with some scenes taking place before the fraud is revealed, and others after. While it's great to see both sides of the issue, the family doing "well" and then collapsing after the truth comes out, the Long Island beach party scenes don't really bring much to the table, except we learn that Bernie Madoff was very rude to caterers. And to his sons. Every family has its own dynamic, sure, but getting involved in his son's dining choices, and forcing him to eat a lobster when he was clearly enjoying a steak seems way over-the-top.
Remember that scene in "It's a Wonderful Life", when there's a run on the bank and everyone comes to the Bailey Building & Loan to withdraw their money? George Bailey can't give this guy his money, because he doesn't have it - that guy's money is invested in THAT guy's house, and this other guy's money is invested in THAT house over there. How is what Madoff did any different, except that all of the investors' money was tied up in houses that were owned by the Madoff family? OK, yeah, I can see how that looks bad. It's sort of like if Mr. Potter were running the Bailey Building & Loan, and he couldn't give back anyone's money because he'd spent it all on himself.
But don't tell me that the U.S. government doesn't do something very similar on a regular basis - taking in money from taxpayers, giving back very little in benefits, while spending billions that it doesn't really have yet on wars and foreign aid. Just saying.
Also starring Michelle Pfeiffer (last seen in "Avengers: Endgame"), Alessandro Nivola (last seen in "You Were Never Really Here"), Hank Azaria (last seen in "Norman"), Michael Kostroff (ditto), Nathan Darrow, Sydney Gayle, Lily Rabe (last seen in "Mona Lisa Smile"), Kristen Connolly (ditto), Kathrine Narducci (last seen in "The Irishman"), Steve Coulter (last seen in "First Man"), Shivam Chopra, Diana B. Henriques, David Lipman, Kelly AuCoin, Don Castro, Amanda Warren (last seen in "Mother!"), Jane Dashow (last seen in "Demolition"), Geoffrey Cantor, Clem Cheung, with archive footage of Fred Armisen, Joy Behar, Wolf Blitzer, Tom Brokaw, George W. Bush, Stephen Colbert, Judy Garland, David Letterman, Bill Maher, Morley Safer, Brian Williams and the voice of Anderson Cooper.
RATING: 5 out of 10 seized assets
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