ViewGuide

Created Jul 15, 2012 03:22PM PST • Edited Jul 15, 2012 06:06PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   OK 2.5

   Enron’s rise and fall gets reprised in this dolorous documentary. Unfortunately there’s little new here for those who followed the debacle when it went down. Worse, the narrative is marred by a blanket sense of sanctimonious disgust and the testimony of at least one disgraced antagonist, convicted felon Bill Lerach. Tort kingpin Lerach was in line for $5-million in Enron fees, making him nearly as greedy as Jeff Skilling.

   Still, Enron CEO Skilling’s concoction of obscure trading mechanisms, off-balance sheet fraud and corporate imperiousness needs to be remembered. Capitalism remains the greatest generator of general prosperity the world has ever known, but when crooks are allowed to cook the books it can do great damage.

4. Acting

   OK 2.5

   Bethany McLean and Sherron Watkins are the most effective witnesses in the film. McClean, the Fortune magazine writer who first published a critical article about Enron, conveys a clear-eyed sense of Enron’s faulty accounting practices that is unjaundiced by the sense of anti-capitalism that suffuses much of the movie.

   Watkins, the Enron accounting executive who bravely blew the whistle on the practices from the inside, provides a lucid view of the horror that descended on Enron employees as they became aware of the rot.

   Many other observers are grandstanders or anti-corporate activists. In Enron, they found a criminal corporation, making their grim satisfaction palpable.

5. Male Stars OK 2.5

6. Female Stars OK 2.5

7. Female Costars OK 2.5

8. Male Costars OK 2.5

10. Film

    Barely OK 2.0

    The filmmakers damn everything Enron did as corrupt, including trading natural gas and building a modern power plant in India. Such anti-market bias has the effect of lessening the contrast between legitimate business and Enron’s actual corrupt practices, while also giving the latter short shrift. For instance, Enron’s use of off balance sheet entities was the largest of their accounting crimes and therefore deserves more time than the film affords.

11. Direction Pretty Bad 1.5

12. Play Barely OK 2.0

13. Music OK 2.5

14. Visuals OK 2.5
15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 1.8

17. Sex Titillating 1.6

18. Violence Gentle 1.4

19. Rudeness Salty 2.5

21. Reality

    Glib 1.1

    The movie seems as much political screed as clear-eyed documentary.

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.3

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0