Inside Job

Composite Score: 86.73

Featuring: Matt Damon, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, George Soros, Barney Frank, David McCormick, Scott Talbott, Christine Lagarde, Gillian Tett, Nouriel Roubini, R. Glenn Hubbard, and Eliot Spitzer

Director: Charles Ferguson

Writers: Charles Ferguson, Chad Beck, and Adam Bolt

Genres: Documentary, Crime

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some drug and sex-related material

Box Office: $7.87 million worldwide

My take on Watching This Film:

                Inside Job is Charles Ferguson’s documentary about the financial collapse of 2008, chronicling the causes from the 1980s to the 2000s, examining the collapse itself, and showcasing the fallout from the collapse. Narrated by Matt Damon, the film shows how the Great Recession was a direct product of Reaganomics’ deregulation of the financial sector and the subsequent regimes’ reticence to return to the regulations of the New Deal era after they had been struck down. This reticence is credited to the influence of financial bigwigs on politics through lobbying, nominations, and political donations, and the film takes a strong stance against the continued allowance of such practices, even offering a call to action against them at the film’s conclusion. Naturally, no one in Washington or the rest of the nation actually listened to the film’s closing challenge because we still sit in the same position with politicians arguing in favor of even less regulation, and even the party that is in favor of regulation has done nothing to undo any of the deregulations of the past few presidencies. Now we are reaping the rewards yet again, this time in the form of artificial inflation due to price gouging from large corporations, constant data breaches from tech companies with no oversight, and an increasingly flimsy infrastructure showcased by collapsing bridges, exploding chemical plants, and bacterial outbreaks in some of the nation’s most trusted food brands. If anything, watching this documentary in 2024 is even more radicalizing than it was when it won the Oscar for Best Documentary in 2010 because of how little we’ve learned from the lessons of 2008. Perhaps my candor can speak to the film’s impact and efficacy. It really does a great job of showcasing just how corrupt the financial and economic sectors of our nation – from the companies to politicians to academia – has become and how deep-seated that corruption is. It’s clearly disgusted with the dehumanizing effect that participation in the late-stage capitalist system has even if it doesn’t want to use those specific words to keep its audience from crying “Communist!”. I will say that I’m usually impressed with the documentaries that I watch, but I rarely recommend them as must-watch material for those not interested in the subject matter, but for Inside Job I’m willing to make an exception. If you care about bringing lasting change in modern politics and economics, you need to watch this film. You can currently find it to rent on most streaming platforms, and I don’t doubt that you could probably find most of it on YouTube as well.