The true story of the 2007-2008 financial crisis as told through three different groups of investors betting against the housing market. 

Michael Burry M.D. (Christian Bale) is a socially awkward, incredibly smart man with total autonomy over a billion dollar hedge fund. Whilst listening to heavy metal, dressed in shorts and wearing nothing on his feet as he air drums in his office he is able to crunch numbers and make millions. But when he finds flaws in the way U.S. housing mortgages are being structured in the economy he has banks create a special product for him so that he can bet that they will fail. 

Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling) gets wind of this product and decides to shop it around to other prospective hedge funds. A wrong number lands him with Mark Baum (Steve Carell) and his associates. Baum is an idealist, fed up with the corruption in the finance industry. Whilst his team are forthright and to the point about their distaste for corruption as they make money surrounded by it. 

Charlie Geller (John Magaro) and Jamie Shipley (Finn Wittrock) are minnows in the ocean compared to the other players. In order to get on the playing field they call in a favour from family friend Ben Rickert (Brad Pitt) who just wants out of the entire industry. 

The Big Short feels like a minor miracle of a film after multiple rewatches. This is a comedy told in an irreverent scattershot manner that manages to explain incredibly complicated financial matters in a simple to understand way, features an absolute cavalcade of stars and character actors, and most importantly tells us an incredibly depressing story about corruption in which no one learns anything and nothing changes, not only without making us feel depressed, but in a manner that is thoroughly entertaining and eminently re-watchable. 

The films focus is on the outsiders and weirdos who saw the banking collapse coming. 

The narrator and storyteller is Ryan Gosling’s Vennett who makes no allusions to him being a hero or a good guy. Just someone who is telling the story in a comic manner. 

The heart of the film is Steve Carell’s Baum. Having suffered tragedy through the loss of his brother he is on a crusade to call out fraud and hypocrisy on Wall Street. We see him interact with his wife Cynthia (Marisa Tomei) who deeply cares for his health as he buries his feelings. And lead his trio of hilarious fellow crusaders played by Mark Strong (before he became a household name for Succession), Rafe Spall and Hamish Linklater. 

Whilst Bale’s highly intelligent outsider is treated with disdain when he breaks traditional mechanisms to making money and the likes of Magaro and Wittrock’s characters are not even allowed to play at the same table without permission. 

On the whole an excellent job is made through these characters to show us how unwelcoming banking is to normal people. Even if these characters are also not normal people, we feel endeared to them by this presentation. 

The masterstroke from writer/director Adam McKay in packaging this story and presenting it to us though is in its humour. The Big Short marked McKay’s filmmaking pivot from out and out comedies such as Anchorman, Step Brothers and The Other Guys to more serious, but still humorous films with messages. Here he cuts to famous people, speaking as themselves, explaining complicated banking systems. Margot Robbie in a bubble bath, drinking champagne explaining sub-prime mortgages. Anthony Bourdain cooking fish, explaining Collateralised Debt Obligations. Or he has a scene play out before a character breaks the fourth wall to say it never actually happened this way. 

The result is that we feel smart, we understand what is happening and we are entertained and laughing. Which is good, because understanding the magnitude of the situation would require laughing or crying. 

Superbly funny and highly entertaining.