Inside Job

If you’re not mad enough yet, Charles Ferguson can fix that. The writer, director, and producer of this 90-minute documentary lays out the causes of the financial meltdown and so-called Great Recession in a clear and compelling way, taking the viewer from Reagan deregulation through the bubble’s aftermath, all with 20-20 hindsight. Nicely shot and briskly edited, with barely a sliver of humor in any frame, Inside Job supplies 100 percent of the U.S. Recommended Daily Allowance of pure anger, and it aims all its guns at the right (and familiar) targets, as well as some you may have overlooked. It calls for reform of the system, but after detailing the bulletproof wealth-transfer machine whose bailout has already cost U.S. taxpayers trillions, Ferguson leaves his viewers in despair. Only the needy require happy endings, and dumb hope, as we’ve seen, is not a useful philosophy. But we still wish the movie would give us something more motivational than raw cynicism and rage.