Ever since Oliver Stone's Wall Street (1987), there have been several films that expose the dangers of the stock market and people who use it to make money, often at the expense of a company's employees. The epitome was Martin Scorese's The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), but, like with Stone's film, Scorsese's was criticized for glamorizing the stockbrokers' excess and exploitation. Scorsese was also criticized for not depicting the financial victims. The Scorsese film was mainly focused on a stockbroker engaging in a pump-and-dump, which is a fraud scheme. Stone's film focused on a stockbroker engaging in insider trading, which is illegal. Yet, the victims were ignored.
This film, directed by Craig Gillespie (Cruella and I, Tonya), changes that. This film does give voice and face to the financial victims of this real-world incident. It's essentially a spiritual sequel to The Big Short (2015) in that it's also about a real-life event, centering on the financial investment, known as "short selling." A short is when someone or some institution benefits from buying and selling stock that loses value. A short is a way of making money from a company failing, which is counter-intuitive, but not if one considers the stock market to be akin to a casino and gambling. A short is basically betting against a company.
Paul Dano (The Fabelmans and Love & Mercy) stars as Keith Gill, a young family man. He has a wife and child, as well as a nice home in the suburbs just south of Boston. He works for an insurance company as an analyst of some kind. However, he's also a YouTuber. He makes videos, particularly live videos, for his YouTube page. Normally, his videos are about the stock market. He also frequently comments on a sub-Reddit called "WallStreetBets" or WSB, which is a forum for discussing the stock market.
Keith realizes that hedge funds or large investment firms were short selling the video game store, known as GameStop. Keith doesn't think those hedge funds should be doing that. He doesn't think they should be betting on GameStop's failure. He believes in the stock, meaning he believes in the company. Therefore, he starts buying stock in GameStop. He also encourages anyone watching him to buy stock in that company, if not directly. People all across the country do so, but the trick is that these retail traders don't sell but hold onto their shares. This raises the value causing the hedge funds or short sellers to lose money. In January 2021, this squeeze resulted in certain hedge funds losing billions.
Seth Rogen (The Fabelmans and Knocked Up) co-stars as Gabe Plotkin, a hedge fund manager at Melvin Capital, one of the giant investors that was short selling GameStop. He sets up operations in Florida during the COVID-19 pandemic. He ignores the retail traders holding their stocks. He dismisses what Keith is doing and considers him and the other retail traders as dumb. It's then funny to see him deal with the aftermath when his firm starts losing billions.
America Ferrera (Barbie and Ugly Betty) also co-stars as Jenny Campbell, a registered nurse in Pittsburgh who is a follower of Keith on social media. She's one of three specific, retail traders that this film follows through this ordeal. She's potentially one of the financial victims that would be affected by what firms like Melvin Capital are doing.
Of the other retail traders, Anthony Ramos (Transformers: Rise of the Beasts and In the Heights) plays Marcos Garcia, an employee at a GameStop, and, Talia Ryder (West Side Story and Never Rarely Sometimes Always) plays Harmony Williams, a lesbian student at the University of Texas at Austin. Marcos hates his job. Specifically, he hates his boss, Brad, played by Dane DeHaan (Oppenheimer and The Amazing Spider-Man 2). Through Marcos, we learn that GameStop might not be the greatest company or best place to work. Through him, we get the feeling that maybe the hedge fund managers like Gabe were right to bet against it.
Through someone like Harmony, we also get again that buying stock in GameStop has nothing to do with how good a company GameStop is or how necessary it is. It's simply about hurting the hedge fund managers, exposing their avaricious practices and maybe making a buck for themselves. Yet, short selling isn't illegal. What might be illegal is what some of the companies did in the wake of this whole incident. First, there is a question of whether Keith's videos about GameStop and being a leader in its stock prices rising broke any rules. However, there's also a bigger question of illegality.
Sebastian Stan (I, Tonya and Captain America: The Winter Soldier) plays Vlad Tenev, a Bulgarian-American who studied math at Stanford University. He teamed up with a classmate named Baiju Bhatt to create trading software for firms and banks. Vlad co-created Robinhood, a mobile app that allows buying and selling of stocks on any person's phone. When the hedge funds start losing billions, WSB on Reddit shuts down and the Robinhood app also shuts down, or specifically stops retail traders from buying stocks, especially in GameStop. Some people suspected that this was the result of collusion with the hedge funds. Vlad disputes that, blaming issues with the clearing house, but the coincidence rubbed people the wrong way.
Watching Vlad twist once all the troubles start hitting him is funny and it goes to the kind of humor that Gillespie demonstrated in I, Tonya. I enjoyed I, Tonya more than this, but this film is just as funny. This film is comedic overall with comedic performances from supporting characters like Pete Davidson (Transformers: Rise of the Beasts and The King of Staten Island) who plays Kevin, the brother to Keith, a Door Dash delivery man, as well as Larry Owens (Abbott Elementary) who plays Chris, a friend of Jennifer and fellow nurse.
It's a large ensemble cast with a lot of people weaving in and out. There isn't enough time to dig into each of them. We get enough to hook into most of them and most of them being recognizable faces also helps to endear us to them. Nick Offerman (The Last of Us and Parks and Recreation) is the prime example. But, of the cast, the center seems to be Keith and his family, which includes Kevin, and Caroline, his wife, played by Shailene Woodley (The Fault in Our Stars and Divergent). Keith's parents also factor into the narrative significantly. Putting aside all the Wall Street stuff, the family scenes end up being the best parts of this film.
Rated R for language, sexual material and drug use.
Running Time: 1 hr. and 45 mins.
In theaters.