| Enron:
the Smartest Guys in the Room (USA;
125 min.) directed by: Alex Gibney documentary |
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| Michael says: "This one was billed as possibly
the next big doc to crossover, with a lively trailer that promised laughs,
shocks and excitement. ENRON: THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM certainly shocked
me and got me angry, but it wasn’t as entertaining as I hoped. Not
that a film like this needs to be all that entertaining… informational
and eye-opening is good too. Directed by Alex Gibny (THE
TRIALS OF HENRY KISSINGER) ENRON suffered from the huge amount of information it was feeding
the audience. Additionally, I didn’t pay that much attention to the
Enron scandal when it was happening, so I had to follow carefully the onslaught
of information the film was providing. It made the experience feel like
work, even as I became increasingly outraged and also disheartened by the
direction our society seems to be headed.
"There is some clever use of music, and lots of great interviews in
ENRON. The focus on is the three “ringleaders” of the megabillion
dollar company, and Gibny takes us through the company’s life,
from its skyrocket to the top, it’s lengthy reign, and it’s
sudden, dramatic downfall. He doesn’t overplay the Bush connection,
but makes it perfectly clear. Gibny also makes an interesting comparison
to a study from the 1950’s, where test subjects were asked to administer
electric shocks of increasing voltage to other test subjects (actually
lab workers who were pretending to receive the shocks) to see just how
far they would go under the guise of following orders and how the folks
at ENRON seemed to lose all sense of morality in their quest to make
money (and basically just followed orders.) A dark and sobering look
at the corporate greed so prevalent in today’s world. 3 cats" |