Warning: this review may contain spoilers

Margin Call is a character-driven film that could be the dark love-child of Wall Street. Written and directed with assurance and maturity, JC Chandor’s feature debut focuses a Wall Street firm’s implosion over a thirty-six hour period, and the people the firm must sacrifice to survive. For those wondering what the film’s title means, a margin call effectively requires an investor to top up their position with extra capital. In times of extreme volatility, a margin call can force an investor to liquidate their holdings.

What I liked about Margin Call is that it doesn’t become bogged down in financial jargon and Wall Street clichés. Instead, JC Chandor gets you under the skins of the principal characters and makes you see, through their eyes, how greed, huge money, hubris and ignorance can destroy not just lives, but souls.

Set in 2007 or 2008, the story kicks off with Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci) a senior risk analyst and company man who has almost connected the dots on the firm’s tsunamic debt problem. Dale is laid-off mercilessly that morning but manages to warn his junior analyst and ‘rocket scientist’ Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto) to take a look at his work, but to “be careful”. When Sullivan does connect the dots, he calls in his boss Will Emerson (Paul Bettany) and Emerson’s boss, Sam Rogers (Kevin Spacey) to check the dire numbers for themselves. Rogers is heartbroken when his dog dies yet he blandly accepts the mass layoffs at the firm that day. Sullivan’s junior colleague, Seth (Penn Badgly) envies his bosses’ salaries but soon realises his own job is at stake.

The film moves into a higher gear when the board of directors meets to decide how the company will deal with the crisis. Chairman and CEO, John Tuld (Jeremy Irons) is a true Wall Street player yet is ignorant to the intricacies of the firm’s bond positions. Irons is coldly pragmatic as he measures who will be sacrificed when the firm sells its bonds to ‘The Street’ in a fire sale the next day. Tuld’s deputy, Jared Cohen (Simon Baker) is Machiavellian throughout and ensures his own survival when Tuld tells Cohen’s rival, Sarah Robertson (Demi More), that she will take the fall but will be well paid for it. In the ensuing sale, the remaining traders on the floor are guaranteed one-off million dollar bonuses by liquidating their positions, but in true Faustian style they must forfeit their jobs to save the firm (and save Tuld’s fortune).

Chandor imbues Margin Call with irony and pathos, skilfully fleshing out the main characters – Sam Rogers, John Tuld, Will Emerson and Peter Sullivan – with the shades of dark and light appropriate to each man’s nature and destiny. In this film, Gordon Gekko’s showy “Greed is Good” ethos is supplanted by John Tuld’s chilling, urbane pragmatism. In a memorable late scene, after the bond fire sale, Tuld is dining alone, an expensive bottle of wine at his elbow. When Sam Rogers tells Tuld that he’s getting out of the game, Tuld quietly reminds Rogers of the realities at play:

It’s not wrong and it’s certainly not any different today than it’s ever been…We just react... and we get paid well for it if we’re right... and get left by the side of the road if we’re wrong. There’s always been and there’s always gonna be the same percentage of winners and losers, happy f*cks and sad sacks, fat pigs and starving dogs in this world... yes there may be more of us today... but the percentages... they always stay exactly the same.

John Tuld embodies Wall Street’s real movers – those that saw the impending financial earthquake and knew they’d be there on the other side to clip the ticket when the trades rolled their way again.

JC Chandor, helped by a strong script and a well-chosen ensemble cast, leaves it to the audience to draw their own conclusions about the moral journey of each character. By inference, Chandor also asks how we would respond if we were in their places. The film’s pacing is smooth and tight throughout, and this, alongside the crisp dialogue that’s low on exposition and high on building the personal and financial stakes, make it a highly engrossing morality piece that would also be a fine play.

The final scene shows Sam Rogers digging a hole for his dead dog in his ex-wife’s front yard. When the credits roll to black we simply hear Sam digging and we know that he’ll go back to the firm to take the money from Tuld – if only because he needs it.