Steve Carell
I remember when the stock market crashed in 2008, but I was really too young at the time to understand what was happening. The Big Short takes all the technical financial jargon and boils it down to two simple words: greed and exploitation. According to the film’s credits, 5 trillion dollars in pension money, real estate value, 401k, savings, and bonds disappeared overnight — and that’s just in the United States. Steve Carell’s character, Mark Baum, is based on the true account of someone who predicted the collapse and bet against the housing market to make money once it did. But Baum is tortured by self-righteousness because he’s someone who is an angry, outspoken cynic of moral and financial corruption, and for part of the film he is in denial about how he will himself capitalize from the destruction of the global economy. Once he does, we witness Carell’s incredible acting range. He displays a powerful array of emotions that made me feel the same terror and hopelessness at facing the full weight of the banks’ corruption.