Director Adam McKay steps away from the Will Ferrell comedy genre to tackle a more serious topic but you can still see from the humourous moments in this movie that he hasn’t fully let go just yet. He has taken a movie which is essentially financial experts discussing mortgages, credit defaulting and sub prime loans for two hours and turned each character into interesting individuals brought together by the prospect of making profit out of a crisis. Each man has his morals tested, most of them don’t take the high ground, and have to deal with this in their own way as the realisation creeps closer that the gamble they took was the correct one and they are going to be very rich but that the country is going belly up, the most interesting of which I found to be Steve Carells excellent, and underrated, performance as Mark Baum who becomes the films moral center point.

Given the subject matter it was never going to be the most riveting of plots so keeping some level of balance between the comedy, the seriousness of the situation and the interest of the viewer must have been difficult but McKay has done well in finding middle ground. The fourth wall breaks and exposition given by some celebrities all add to the absurdity of the tale (Margot Robbie in a babble bath? I’m not complaining, but why?) which, while true to life, sounds like it couldn’t be put together by the best of Hollywood script writers. Where the movie falls a bit short (excuse the pun) is that it seems to be unsure if it’s a slap on the wrists to the fraudsters or whether it’s a black comedy about rebels in the Wall Street set up. So while part of you is siding with these guys in hoping they succeed another part want them to fail for taking advantage of others in a desperate situation. Either way it still falls far short of the brilliant Wolf Of Wall Street but that being said if you are looking for a cleverly told (if a little sobering from time to time) story, it’s a well directed, well acted and entertaining movie.

DJ Speaks Rating: 6.5 out of 10