Freefall [DVD]

The recession is incomprehensible. Every day, the news waxes financial doom, and we're all having it drummed into us that the world is going to fall into the sun, hugely in debt, and it's because banks did something with money they didn't have. Freefall was touted as a drama that would explain the situation, but it doesn't, really. It's still very much worth watching, though.

It tells 3 stories, I suppose, although it focuses primarily on that of Jim and Mandy, played by Joseph Mawle and Anna Maxwell Martin respectively. They are a young couple with a young family, living in rented accommodation, and when Jim runs into old friend, Dave, he is persuaded into taking a mortgage to buy his first house, just before the financial crash.

Dave, himself, is a cockroach - the sort of chap that drives along in his cockmobile while singing aloud to Gabrielle because he's just earned himself a nice wad of commission. That it'll financially destroy the person that's signed their lives over to the lender is, puh, a petty insignificance. At the start of the film, he's dating a vacuous bint as portrayed by Girls Aloud's Sarah Harding in what turns out to be a (blessedly brief) dizzying showcase of her non-talent.

And, finally, there's Gus - and he's another weak point. The acting is brilliant - I tip my hat to Aidan Gillen - but they've made the character a pantomime caricature. He's twitchy, a coke junkie, soulless, unaware, intimidating... he comes across as having, if not a mental disorder, certainly a personality one. And that's where Freefall lets itself down (no pun intended).

There are no nuances - the baddies are sooper-bad and every bad situation is made the very worst it could be. After all, the financial crisis is serious enough without people losing their jobs, and not only people who are suddenly unemployed are struggling. Its being so heavy-handed and laying it on so thick meant the narrative becomes a little soap opera-ish, when it needn't have been: the *reality* of what's happening is serious enough to sustain a drama.

I don't know if this is a DVD worth actually buying, as it doesn't have too much replay value. But if you do get the chance to watch it once, I'd very much recommend it. It won't tell you about the logistics of the recession, nor explain the ins and outs of the banking industry, but it's well made, well acted (mostly) and it'll give you a healthy contempt for the banking industry. And, frankly, it deserves nothing less.

Interesting idea for a film. Namely, shows the cause and effects of the sub prime mortgage market in the UK via a vertical format. At the bottom is the borrower that took out sub prime loan with a short term teaser rate to get into a home that they couldn't really afford. Next up is the aggressive mortgage sales person that works for a mortgage broker and was trained in a "boiler room" type of environment. Finally, there is the financial executive (perhaps a head of structured finance) that runs the trading desk that packages the loans into bonds for sale to institutional investors.

Unfortunately, the film falls short both in character development and from actually providing information. Perhaps the best developed and most compelling character is the mortgage salesperson. Prototypical new working rich with a limited education from a blue collar background that with success comes all the new toys. The borrower who ultimately ends up having to default on the loan when the teaser rate expires and the payment goes up by 50% is somewhat sympathetic, though he doesn't place enough of the blame on himself (I.E. not reading the loan docs, etc.), choosing instead to blame the loan agent (who BTW was an old school friend) for his problems after getting fired from his job for falling asleep into a double shift. Also, it is unclear why his wife didn't simply get a job to make up the difference in the payment?

The worst job of character development and providing at least a basic understanding of how the process works re: the banker that worked in the "City" and was responsible for packaging the loans into bonds, etc. Yes, the character (the only American in the film) comes off as a cold bastard who only lives for the deal while neglecting his daughter from his prior marriage and occasionally nailing his co-worker on the trading floor after hours. However, what I would like to have been given is better details relative to the process and scope of the market. OK, I work in the business and realize that the subject matter may not be for the layman and perhaps the director didn't feel that dumbing it down would add anything to film, though at least a simple flow chart showing how loans make it into pools of loans and how pools of loans make it into bonds and how the bonds are then rated by a 3rd party re: risk and finally sliced and diced for sale to institutional buyers in the secondary market (AKA mortgage backed/asset backed securities for dummies). Truth be told, re: to the film, they were actually structuring CDO's (collateralized debt obligations), which is an asset class that can combine many forms of collateral into a single issue, as opposed to ABS (asset backed securities), which was typically the exit strategy of choice for sub prime loans. Aside from my quest for details, I would have liked the film to show the effects of the other employees of the bank that were not earning 7-figures annually.

Despite the flaws (namely, my quest for detail) I would recommend watching the film, as there are not many fictional pieces available that cover the topic

The BBC's latest one-off drama is a story of three main characters and how their lives are effected by the recession. It begins in 2007, just before the crash hit and picks up again in 2008, in the belly of the beast.

The main characters are Dave (Dominic Cooper), an arrogant and unscrupulous mortgage lender who is on the ascendancy, buying a new house for him and his beautician girlfriend (Girls Aloud' Sarah Harding, over-acting but having a lot of fun). When Dave bumps into old school friend Jim (Joeseph Mawle), he cannot resist luring him, his wife (Anna Maxwell Martin) and children into the promise of a better life with a larger house, and consquently a larger amount of money to pay in the long term. This is all manageable as long as the economy stays as it is...

Gus (Aiden Gillen) is a cold, driven man who only cares about making money. For him, closing a big deal is a sexual thrill, which he often indulges via an on-off relationship with Anna (Rosamund Pike). As a consequence of his obsessiveness Gus has a less-than perfect private life. He is a divorcee with a daughter who feels neglected by him, but as long as the money keeps rolling in, who cares right...?

Well, obviously the money and the success do not keep coming in, as we all know. When the banks and mortgage lenders hit deep trouble, and without wanting to give the whole story away, the lives of the characters all change for the worse in some form or other.

The film's acting and cast are generally good (with the earlier exception of Sarah Harding's excruciating cameo). Joeseph Mawle as Jim really gets into the role of the satisfied security guard-turned doomed man, while Anna Maxwell Martin is also quite impressive as his cautious and eventually vindicated wife. Dominic Cooper has the smugness, the swagger and the arrogance to provide a clear representation of the traits that landed the world in such financial trouble. The refreshingly realistic dialogue zips along nicely, as does the plot, sometimes filmed with interesting documentary-style camera angles. The

However, it is not perfect. The character of Gus never felt quite what the film wanted him to be. By the time he is confronted about his greed and avarice it feels as though the character has not done enought to convince the viewer he is anything more than a determined business man who should pay more attention to his daughter. It is also a bit of a missed opportunity that the character of Dave does not get more time on screen. While the other main players are experiencing turmoil, he is for the most part nowhere to be seen. It would have been interesting to see how the recession affected the man behind all the sales-talk, if there was anything else there at all.

Overall, Freefall is an interesting, fairly insightful look at how the difficult economic times affected different people, and how it was allowed to happen. It may have its limitations, but it is a well-made and entertaining watch and may provide a greater understanding of what these times really mean for the people of Britain.