Movie Blog: 'Inside Job' Shows World Top$y-Turvy

Charles Ferguson's second film begins, of all places, in Iceland. It follows the privatization of the country's banks and their journey down a financial wormhole, which, in the end, sucks in the country's environment and the finances of its citizens.

From Iceland's highlands, the film travels to a different wildness: Wall Street. Here the film gets introspective and under your skin as it depicts the lunacy of the subprime housing meltdown, the reckless and debauched lifestyles of the Wall Street elite, the ethically bankrupt business practices of the major banks and insurance companies, and how academia, which houses the experts we trust to foresee, analyze and fix these problems, had either no idea what was going on or kept quiet in fear of stopping the party -– one at which dollar bills fluttered instead of confetti.

Inside Job points many of fingers at many places. At times, it's hard to follow Ferguson's explanation of what caused the crisis. However, the movie describes and depicts complex financial witchcraft, like derivatives, very well using animated graphs, which are augmented nicely by Matt Damon's familiar voice.

At its best, Inside Job reaches peaks that will make you laugh and rage. Watching bank managers try to explain the ethics of knowingly selling their customers crap is both funny and heartbreaking. And the fact that many of these men got away with millions of dollars makes it truly frightening.

There are other moments, however, at which Ferguson becomes somewhat annoying, almost vainglorious. While questioning some not too famous economists, he comes off not as a hard-hitting investigator, but as a filmmaker looking for a punching bag. Since most of the big financial players he targets -– Summers, Bernanke, Geithner and Greenspan -– declined to appear in the film, it feels as though Ferguson is just picking on minions instead of wrestling with the behemoths.

Sophomorically echoing the 2008 election and Tea Party rhetoric, Inside Job calls for change in an uninspiring finale. The answers Inside Job offers are not nearly as interesting or as powerful as the questions it asks. But that is no reason to miss it.

If you can stomach a look back at the last few years, see Inside Job. I guarantee you will giggle and seethe as you watch Iceland and America get crushed by the economic tsunami both countries are still recovering from.

Jonathon Sharp is an intern with WCCO.COM.