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Benedicte Gravrand, Opalesque Geneva:

Reviewing history is always valuable. Reviewing recent financial history, in today’s context, can also be enlightening. Should you wish to settle for a motion picture instead of the written words, for a more succinct overview, here is a book-inspired film dramatically relating what happened almost exactly three years ago in the U.S. financial markets.

(Part 1 of the article is a review of Aljazeera’s TV documentary called "Meltdown".)

If you have not read Andrew Ross Sorkin’s book "Too big to fail" (2009) or even if you have, the film version (2011) offers a lighter yet more dramatic view of what happened behind the scene during September-October 2008 on Wall Street and in Washington. It is well worth watching, if only for the first-rate direction and the superb all-around acting.

To name a few of the cast, Richard Fuld (played by James Woods), then-CEO of investment bank Lehman Brothers, is portrayed as an impatient general who will not sound retreat; New York Fed's Tim Geithner (Billy Crudup) as a whiz kid whose emotions run high; and U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, played with sympathy by William Hurt, as a man caught in financial wartime. The film is fast-paced; the conversations (especially those between Fed chairman Be......................

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