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You don’t need to be a banker or hold an economics degree, to
completely understand tonight’s HBO 9 p.m. movie “Too Big to Fail.”

But it would help.

Revolving around the 2008 financial crisis, “Fail” gets a
better than passing grade because of a cast led by William Hurt (see above) as Treasury
Secretary Henry Paulson, Paul Giammati as Federal Reserve  chairman Ben Bernanke, and James Woods as Lehman Brothers chief executive Richard Fuld.

Based on the book by New York Times reporter Andrew Ross
Sorkin (who has a cameo as a reporter), “Fail” makes Paulson the overwhelmed hero trying to save the financial world from the greedy bank leaders trying to save their
companies. Fuld plays the fool, who overplays his hand, turns a significant
crisis into a disaster and delivers a classic line aimed at financial wizard
Warren Buffett (who owns the Buffalo News). Bernanke just eats a lot with
Paulson, dishing out morsels about how to avoid duplicating the 1929 Depression
as a crisis in confidence hits the banks and investment houses.

“People act like we’re crack dealers,” says Fuld as the value of Lehman free falls after he rejects a Buffett offer.

Of course, it isn’t easy making a movie about finance that is appealing and understandable to a wide audience of people, some of whom can’t balance their bank accounts.

In a sense, the topic will be “Too Big to Understand” for some viewers. Heck, it wasn’t easy for the network newscasts to explain the crisis while it was going on. “Fail” smartly uses news footage and drops in some extended dialogue an hour into the film that simplifies the complex
problems brought about the mortgage and real estate collapse, deregulation, and debt held by China and Russia.

“With one phone call, they can take down the entire U.S. economy,” Paulson notes of the Chinese and Russians.

Pretty scary stuff. “Fail” becomes quite a horror and disaster story that only isn’t edge-of-the-seat stuff because we now know that America and the world have survived.

There is a reasonable amount of suspense caused by some missteps, miscalculations and some things that Paulson, Timothy Geithner (played by Billy Crudup) of the Federal  Reserve
in New York and other good guys just missed because of all the chaos going on
around them as one crisis followed another one.

“I did the last one, you’re going to do this one,” Paulson tells the bank leaders he brought together to try and save Lehman and restore confidence.

Later, he adds: “You need to fix. You need to pay for it. We will remember anyone who is not helpful.”

Of course, some of his own help misses some key things.  At one point, Paulson says to members of his team “We’re like “The Gang That Doesn’t Shoot Straight.’” In the end, just about everything was straightened out.

Of course, bankers will have their own take on which leaders are accurately depicted and which ones are treated too kindly or too negatively.

One clear winner in the film would appear to be President Obama, who came into office months after this mess was taking place. His 2008 opponent, Sen. John McCain, is
depicted as almost ruining a plan to save the financial world by making a grandiose
gesture to stop his campaign when things had just about been decided on the
bank bailout plan.

President Obama can also point now to a revived stock market. Of course, his critics and critics of bankers note that the revival hasn’t yet hit Main Street. But “Fail” will be helpful in reminding voters that things could be much, much worse.

Even more importantly, it should serve as a warning to make sure this potential horror story doesn’t happen again.

Rating: 3 and a half stars out of 4

pergament@msn.com

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