the room movie
This searing examination of the Enron accounting scandal reveals the psychology of greed and corporate corruption that facilitated the company’s rise to power and also its fall. [1]
I went into Alex Gibney’s “Smartest Guys in the Room” having read Robert Bryce’s “Pipe Dreams” and Kurt Eichenwald’s “Conspiracy of Fools” thinking to myself: should be good, but no way the movie is going to come close to telling the story like those two authors did. [2]
Shedding light on the new economy of the 1990s when predictions and book-cooking flourished without actual profits, the film shows how it was not Enron alone but a network of bankers, traders, and accountants who turned a blind eye to the company’s clearly suspicious numbers. [...] In one of the company’s cold and calculated moves–which caused the California power outages, and lead to the ousting of governor Gray Davis–Enron employees are shown laughing at forest fires. [1]
The corrupt and closely-guarded mismanagement by Enron executives (including Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, later placed on criminal trial) is revealed through such heinous concepts as “Hypothetical Future Value” (a way of reaping fortunes based on false profit projections) and the use of offshore “shell” companies to hide the massive losses that eventually toppled the company (along with the venerable Arthur Anderson accounting firm) and left 20,000 employees jobless. [2]
Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, founder and innovator of the doomed conglomerate, went about their looting and deregulatory shenanigans because there was nobody within the anti-protectionist eighties and nineties to tell them no: the success-is-everything ethos to enabled them to do what they did, and their insulated, cult-like business practices encouraged others as they were encouraged. [...] Faithful readers know that I would automatically be in favour of one film for another. [3]
Johnny: You are tearing me apart, Lisa! [4]
Join Amazon Prime and ship Two-Day for free and Overnight for $3.99. [2]
Be in next week’s Rotten Tomatoes Show! [...] CEO Ken Lay and top dogs Jeff Skilling and Andy Fastow give candid interviews that illustrate their skill at deflecting hard questions and egotistically boasting about the company’s success. [1]
This film is like getting stabbed in the head. [4]
Where Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room realizes, however dimly, that its subject is more than just a failed company, Gunner Palace is so locked into its piece of the puzzle that it fails to see the full picture- which in the case of its subject, has dire consequences. [3]
… a few brave whistle-blowers stepped forward, including Bethany McLean, author of the Enron novel upon which this film is based, who wrote an article in Fortune magazine calling the company’s bluff. [1]
His girlfriend Lisa, played by oft-topless Juliette Danielle, seduces his best friend, played by department store mannequin Greg Sestero. [4]
Sources:
[1] Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room - Rotten Tomatoes
[2] Amazon.com: Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room: Movies & TV
[3] 2005 Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room - Movie reviews, trailers …
[4] The Room (2003)