By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 2.75
Director: Leslie Cockburn
Country: united_states
Year: 2009
Running time: 89
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1396209/
Bruce says: “AMERICAN CASINO begins with Blossom Dearie singing ‘The Party’s Over’ while a talking head from Bloomberg tells the audience that ‘people didn’t know they were in a casino,’ referring to the mortgage crisis that has forced a $12 trillion bailout and a recession that threatens to match the Great Depression before the dust settles. Contrary to public opinion, many of those caught in the mortgage web are middle class working folks, people who are educated and hardworking. The big glitch is the way in which they were given mortgages. The original numbers they were given did not include escrow for taxes and insurance or did not properly explain how adjustable mortgages work and what their liability might be three years form closing. Procedures were anything but professional. Applications were often taken over the phone and closings were conducted in mall parking lots. The subprime lenders targeted minority areas and began lending money to people who had been denied prime loans for years. Many mortgages were called ‘Liar Loans’ because there was no income verification; to make matters worse, loan officers often inflated salaries to get business on the books. Risk assessment techniques and modeling have been fine-tuned over the years to be extraordinarily accurate in predicting financial viability, yet those same models are 3.8 times more likely to be in error in minority communities. Statistically that is impossible.
“Leslie Cockburn offers a 101 course in financial crisis but does not choose to probe much beyond the surface into the causes. Instead she focuses her filmmaking on inner city working folks in Baltimore that are victims. The first is a school teacher who is losing his house; next, a woman who is employed by Johns Hopkins; third an unemployed minister who is losing her house because of a refinancing forclosure. Their stories are heartbreaking but much time is wasted panning through various rooms of their homes. Some time is spent in Stockton, California. There we see some streets on which almost every home has been foreclosed. We also see the effects of the housing bubble – neighborhoods that are deteriorating because of vandalism or disuse. Abandoned sites become havens for rodents; deserted swimming pools are new breeding grounds for insects. No one seems to be factoring in the costs which our nation will incur as it addresses these ancillary problems.
“Cockburn does trace the legislative genesis of the current debacle to Phil Gramm and his bill that exempted credit default swaps from both federal and state controls. Henry Paulson seems ingenuous as he claims “This is all about the American taxpayer; that’s all we care about.” His Wall Street cronies must be having a good laugh over that statement. Alan Greenspan, former head of the Federal Reserve, claims that he has ‘discovered a flaw in his model.’ His free-market philosophy does not work after all. He believed that the banks could effectively spread their high risk ventures to the rest of the financial community. What goes unmentioned, however, is the gross dishonesty pervading the business community. Common sense could have predicted this crisis; financial models were superfluous.
“The film I would most compare AMERICAN CASINO to, is MAXED OUT, an analysis of the credit card crisis. That film did a better job of explaining its subject although admittedly the issues in MAXED OUT were more straightforward and easier to grasp. 3 cats”
Julie says: “The movie had some interesting real life stories. Really bad/cheesy rap music added in in places…ie I would have chosen better rap if I were to add it-It highly detracted from the quality of the movie. 2 cats”
Carolyn says: “So many numbers and facts! I thought I followed pretty well and it made me want to do something.. but what? 3 1/2 cats”