Oscar-winning actor Kevin Spacey stars in first-time director J.C. Chandor’s “Margin Call,” a drama set in a New York bank as it scrambles to offload massive toxic debts irrespective of what it means for the market or the population as a whole.
Spacey, as long-serving trading boss Sam, wrestles with the knowledge that his actions will harm the bank’s reputation and put people out of work, but he, like others in a cast including Demi Moore, feels obliged to follow orders as that is what pays.
Chandor said the movie, which has its premiere at the Berlin film festival on Friday where it is in the main competition, sought to humanize the world of big-bonus banks and to show that greed went further than the world of finance.
“What the script for me is about is not excessive greed on any one individual’s part, but it was the greed on a very small scale of the whole population, certainly in the United States,” he told reporters after the official press screening.
Cast and Crew
Director
J.C. Chandor
Producer
Robert Ogden Barnum, Michael Benaroya, Neal Dodson, Corey Moosa, Zachary Quinto
Screenwriter
J.C. Chandor
Starring
Kevin Spacey as Sam Rogers
Zachary Quinto as Peter Sullivan
Stanley Tucci as Eric Dale
Demi Moore as Sarah Robertson
Simon Baker as Jared Cohen
Paul Bettany as Will Emerson
Jeremy Irons as John Tuld
Penn Badgley as Seth Bregman
Mary McDonnell as Mary Rogers