By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3 cats
Director: Alex Gibney
Country: united_states
Year: 2005
Running time: 125
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0413845/combined
Michael says: “This one was billed as possibly the next big doc to crossover, with a lively trailer that promised laughs, shocks and excitement. ENRON: THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM certainly shocked me and got me angry, but it wasn’t as entertaining as I hoped. Not that a film like this needs to be all that entertaining… informational and eye-opening is good too. Directed by Alex Gibney (THE TRIALS OF HENRY KISSINGER) ENRON suffered from the huge amount of information it was feeding the audience. Additionally, I didn’t pay that much attention to the Enron scandal when it was happening, so I had to follow carefully the onslaught of information the film was providing. It made the experience feel like work, even as I became increasingly outraged and also disheartened by the direction our society seems to be headed.
“There is some clever use of music, and lots of great interviews in ENRON. The focus on is the three ‘ringleaders’ of the megabillion dollar company, and Gibney takes us through the company’s life, from its skyrocket to the top, its lengthy reign, and its sudden, dramatic downfall. He doesn’t overplay the Bush connection, but makes it perfectly clear. Gibney also makes an interesting comparison to a study from the 1950’s, where test subjects were asked to administer electric shocks of increasing voltage to other test subjects (actually lab workers who were pretending to receive the shocks) to see just how far they would go under the guise of following orders and how the folks at ENRON seemed to lose all sense of morality in their quest to make money (and basically just followed orders.) A dark and sobering look at the corporate greed so prevalent in today’s world. 3 cats”