Film Reviews

Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room

• Rating:
• Director: Alex Gibney.
• Starring: Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, Andrew Fastow, Peter Coyote.
• Details: US, 109mins, 15A.

From Michael Moore's Roger And Me, Bowling For Columbine and Fahrenheit 911, through Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me, to Robert Greenwald's Outfoxed and Wal-Mart: The High Price Of Low there is with each passing year a wealth of filmmakers lining up to further damn the country of their birth. Alex Gibney's Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room is next in line. Based on the best selling book by Fortune magazine reporters Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, this film chronicles the biggest business scandal and worst corporate disaster in American history which saw its top executives walk away with millions while investors and employees were left with less than nothing. In early 2001, Enron boasted profits of something near $70 billion but 24 days later it declared bankruptcy. With close ties to both George Bush and George W. Bush, Chief CEO Jeff Skilling was the main perpetrator in creating the illusion that Enron was a profitable and viable business venture while Enron was simultaneously plummeting further and further into massive debt. This film is more than a working class hero cursing the corporate fat cats as it tries to get inside the minds of the men behind the disgrace and tries to discover how they could live with themselves despite ruining thousands of families and small businesses. However, lacking interviews by the bigwigs involved (Skilling, Lay and Fastow), Gibney's documentary lacks the necessary bite and did himself no favours when he refuses to interview, bar one, the ordinary person on the street who are the real victims of Enron. Anyone hoping to further understand the working of the stock market will not be any smarter by the end.

Review by Gavin Burke