Too Big to Fail, which premieres on HBO on May 23, 2011, features a star studded cast recounting the events that led to the financial crisis and bailouts by the U.S. government in 2008. It is a mini-series packed into a 98-minute made-for-television movie where several essential characters are quickly introduced and where finance and economics are casually discussed. It may help if one has a baseline of knowledge about the crisis before watching the movie. If one doesn’t know who Henry Paulson, Ben Bernanke, and Timothy Geithner are or what Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, and AIG are, it may prove slightly difficult to follow.

Although the Director, Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential, 8 Mile), was limited to telling a very long and complicated story in a very short amount of time, he was able to skillfully pull it off. Perhaps this is because the screenwriter, Peter Gould (Breaking Bad), deftly adapted Andrew Ross Sorkin’s 2009 prize winning New York Times Bestseller, Too Big to Fail.

The cast was right out of a Robert Altman film, there was a large number of well known actors including William Hurt (Paulson – Sec. Treasury), James Woods (Fuld – Lehman Bros), Paul Giamatti (Bernanke – Chair, Federal Reserve), Bill Pullman (Dimon – JPMorgan Chase), Ed Asner (Buffet – Berkshire Hathaway), Billy Crudup (Geithner – President, Federal Reserve), Matthew Modine (Thain – CIT Group), Tony Shalhoub (Mack – Morgan Stanley), Topher Grace (Wilkinson), Cynthia Nixon (Davis), and many others. They all looked and played their parts very well with the exception that there seemed to be no effort made toward sounding like the people they played. It was difficult to get past the notable voices of the actors. Paul Giamatti sounds like Paul Giamatti and nothing like Ben Bernanke. Hurt sounded nothing like Paulson. Crudup nothing like Geithner. Perfection wasn’t necessary, but it seemed as though there was little to no effort made at all by the actors to at least sound a little more like the real people they were portraying and less like themselves.

The story opens on a  shot of Ronald Reagan. It is news footage of a speech he gives on deregulation. Credits play as we see an image of Clinton signing a piece of legislation as the audio of newsmakers make mention that this is Congress’ bill being singed. Alan Greenspan is seen and states, “Don’t regulate for regulation’s sake,” which is followed by Bush proclaiming everyone should live out the American dream and own their own home. Miscellaneous clips talks of high profits and subprime loans, and then mortgage meltdown and government bailout.

At this point, I am thinking this film is going to be about blame… and that blame is going to be deregulation ushered in by Reagan, the Republican Congress during the Clinton years, Bush 43, and Reagan through Bush’s Federal Reserve appointee, Alan Greenspan.

This prompts me to check the cast and crew to see who they support and if they are bringing their agenda to this story in their hopes to rewrite history and put Republicans in a negative light and Democrats in a positive light before the election in 2012. And, of course, the Director and the Writer are both ardent Obama supporters. All those at HBO support Obama like Co-President Eric Kessler, Co-President Richard Plepler, President of HBO entertainment Sue Naegle, President of HBO Films Len Amato and Executive Producers Paula Weinstein, Carol Fenelon, and Ezra Swerdlow. Even the Cinematographer Kramer Morgenthau and Casting Director Alexa Fogel have contributed to Obama’s 2008 campaign. And the Obama supporting list of actors is long too: Topher Grace, William Hurt, Matthew Modine, Cynthia Nixon, and Amy Carlson. As if that’s not enough, there are many other ardent left-wingers like Paul Giamatti, Bill Pullman, Tony Shalhoub, and Ed Asner.

Then the story opens on James Woods playing Dick Fuld, Chairman and CEO of Lehman Brothers… an ardent Democrat and Obama supporter. James Woods stands out as the political maverick in the cast. In a recent interview with New York Magazine, Woods is quoted as saying, “I’ve always said that the next Obama slogan should be, ‘Barack Obama: Putting America Out of Business,’ because that’s what he’s doing.” So I decided to turn off my bias filter and give this story a chance.

As the story unfolded, I saw that the villains in this film weren’t the Republicans, rather it was a single villain… the total and complete financial collapse of our nation, or as Bernanke puts it, “[replaying] the depression of the 1930s. Only this time… far, far worse.” So, regardless of any one American’s political affiliation watching this film, total and complete financial collapse is an enemy we can all collectively desire to defeat.

The heroes, however, that’s a little more complicated. The actual heroes of the story are Republicans Henry Paulson (Secretary of the Treasury), Ben Bernanke (Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve), and Independent Timothy Geithner (President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York). They artfully maneuver their way through the minefield of economic collapse. Bear Stearns has already collapsed, Lehman Brothers is on the brink, Merrill Lynch next, and with all this going on, AIG – the safety net for all these creditors – was in the process of imploding from its own lack of liquidity and inability to meet its obligations. If AIG falls, all the banks fall. People would pull their money out of their banks and there would be no George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) trying to stop the “run on the bank” by convincing his depositors to take only what they need from his honeymoon stash. America, as we know it, would be in ruins.

Every maneuver in their quest to stabilize the markets is met with unpredictable reactions. Once they believe they’ve averted disaster, the pundits, investors, and citizens react differently than expected. It’s a reminder of Nobel winning economist F.A. Hayek’s precept that, “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”

But in the end, as we all know, it was capital injections in the form of a Troubled Asset Relied Plan (TARP) that would “save the day.” In short, the plan would see the U.S. government purchase assets and equity from all financial institutions, even if they didn’t need it, in order to stabilize and strengthen the financial sector. As Bernanke put it, the upside would be stabilizing banks faster, the downside would be nationalizing a few banks. Their plan to soften the blow was that they would force private banks to participate in this plan under law, but that the government would not have a voting interest or the ability to tell the banks how they use the money injected into their coffers… leaving the question to the viewer, “They will lend it out, won’t they?”

But, was TARP the right solution? If one believes it was, then the heroes of this story are without a doubt Republicans Paulson and Bernanke. But, if one believes it wasn’t the right solution, then the Republicans are just kicking the can down the road. Regardless, the story is a quest for a private solution, according to Paulson.

As Republican public relations guru Jim Wilkson (Topher Grace) says at one point, “You just can’t hand the banks massive piles of cash. Nobody’s going to go for it. To the Republicans, it’s nationalization. To the Democrats, it’s a bailout. And the banks are going to go ballistic.”

The story is well crafted and builds suspense out of the unexciting topics of finance and economics. There were parts that bothered me, like making the Republican Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Christopher Cox, look like an immature boob, or Republican presidential candidate Senator McCain look like he is clueless on economic matters contrasted by Senator Obama’s grip on the subject, or simplistically blaming deregulation while omitting the fault of Carter’s Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, or that derivatives and subprime loans were born during Clinton’s presidency, or more importantly that in 2006 Republicans pleaded with the Democratically-controlled Congress to begin taking measures by pulling the reigns back on Fannie and Freddie to mitigate the impending economic disaster.

Those criticisms, however, were offset by so many of the lines delivered by Topher Grace’s character, Jim Wilkson, who best resembled the attitudes and feelings of most Americans during this time. At one point, it is suggested that the government purchases up the toxic assets of the banks, to which he responds, “Ohhh, call it cash for trash,” he also calls nationalization “the N-word” and that it is un-American, and he suggests that the government running the banks would be like the government running the Post Office, which they “run like a dream.” Another character addresses the issue that the government having the ability to dictate compensation would be the biggest “brain drain this country has ever seen.” And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is characterized as something like the head of the Mafia. Her character comes across as an elitist snob, which I particularly enjoyed.

The movie was a surprise. Although it wasn’t 100 percent balanced, it was enough for this right-winger to actually enjoy it. And the filmmakers did a pretty decent job packing in a lot of characters and a lot of story into a short amount of time. If Obama-loving HBO can pull off the upcoming Sarah Palin story, Game Change, and the Dick Cheney movie, Angler, with the same deftness and fairness, I will be pleasantly surprised.  Better yet… I will be astonished.

I wish I could say that about nice people.

See, nice people are worse.

Case in point: Matthew Modine.

He’s a nice guy. Pleasant, in a puppy dog sort of way. I loved him in Vision Quest.

But he’s also clueless. Dangerously so. And when you combine congeniality with congenital cluelessness, you have a recipe for carnage.

This is what he had to say, on an interview on CNN.

“Imagine if somebody were to really sit down with Osama Bin Ladin and say, ‘listen man,what is it that you’re so angry at me about that you’re willing to have people strap bombs to themselves, or get inside of airplanes and fly them into buildings.’ That would be the miracle if we can get, sit down and talk to our enemies and find a way for them to hear us.”

Modine just turned 51, but his opinion reflects that of a six year old girl, as well as some folks in our government too (see Iran). It’s a perspective that suggests one has never contemplated evil beyond a character portrayed in a script. MM fails to realize that there are people out there who see your desire for “understanding” as one reason why you’ll be killed first. Osama thinks: I’ll shoot you first, cuz you’re spineless.

And also, you were in Cutthroat Island.

When faced with an “us vs. them,” mentality- in which the choice for our enemies is either death or glory: history suggests there’s only one way to respond. And it’s not with back rubs ( much to my sadness). It’s annihilation until surrender. It’s an ugly thing. But when you consider the alternative – subservience under a new caliphate – it’s pretty much all we have.

And if you disagree with me, you’re probably a racist extremist homophobe who eats poor children.

Tonight we’ve got John Devore, Courtney Friel, comedian Jim Florentine, and subbing for Andy Levy, Mike Baker.

Also, Joshua Gomez, from Chuck!

Imagine if somebody were to really sit down with Osama Bin Ladin and say, ‘listen man,what is it that you’re so angry at me about that you’re willing to have people strap bombs to themselves, or get inside of airplanes and fly them into buildings.’ That would be the miracle if we can get, sit down and talk to our enemies and find a way for them to hear us. – Matthew Modine

No, we’re not making this up. It’s all captured on video here.

Ahh, to have the luxury to be so airy and ignorant and superior about such things. He should thank the United States Military for that luxury.

He won’t.

But he should.

In other news… there’s a Matt dumber than Damon.

The property owned by Ms. David off North Road was the subject of a series of wetlands violations in 2005, when construction of a stone fire pit, barbecue grill area and wooden stage for a children’s theatre with seating was begun in a wetland without a permit.

Ms. David, as you may recall, produced the Goracle’s epic documentary, An Inconvenient Truth.  She also wrote The Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming for children (doing her part to convince one in three frightened children that the earth will implode before they grow up), and went on a much ballyhooed bus tour with fellow greenie Sheryl “One Sheet” Crow in order to help Save The Earth™ a couple of years back. How riding around the country in an exhaust-spewing bus and using up oodles of electricity for Sheryl’s musical stylings was supposed to “help” is beyond me. But wait, the bus was powered by vegetable oil instead of that dastardly fossil fuel, and pal Sheryl is committed to being green by driving a hybrid and using cold water to wash her clothes. Forgive my cynicism; I’m convinced.

Fortunately for Ms. David, her contractor was fully prepared to take the heat:

The new infractions occurred during the construction of a tennis court. Workers installed a makeshift road with boards and stones and drove heavy machinery across the resources area making a path to the tennis court site. Attempts to reach Ms. David were unsuccessful but Bart Thorpe, who said he is the contractor on the job, took full responsibility for the violations yesterday.

“She’s obviously a very busy person and she trusted the contractor, just like last time,” he said. “And I inadvertently made a mistake. It’s something she had no knowledge of and had nothing to do with, and it’s a minor thing.”

Perhaps, as “the boss,” the buck should stop with Ms. David. But it’s all in a day’s work for the “do as I say” celebrity set. David’s in good company with folks like Arianna Huffington for her penchant for flying on corporate jets while decrying the evils of SUVs and the like.

That’s okay, though, because as Laurie herself once said:

“Yes, I take a private plane on holiday a couple of times a year, and I feel horribly guilty about it. I probably shouldn’t do it. But the truth is, I’m not perfect. This is not about perfection. I don’t expect anybody else to be perfect either. That’s what hurts the environmental movement – holding people to a standard they cannot meet. That just pushes people away.”

Frankly, it’s hard to know what she expects. She seems to be all over the place.

But perhaps Ms. David is unaware that these days, more people are concerned about the fate of the economy than their culpability in so-called anthropogenic global warming. Being able to afford gas in order to get to a job that may be in jeopardy has become more important.

And as for the claim by global warming activists that the “debate is over” among scientists, she obviously hasn’t spoken to Dr. Jim Buckee, who says that:

…far from warming, the Earth is set to enter a 20-year cooling period. Dr Buckee believes human behaviour has no effect on the climate and the vast sums spent by governments trying to promote renewable energy to cut greenhouse gas emissions are being wasted. Far from being a key cause of climate change, he says, carbon dioxide emissions have little or no impact. … Instead of human activities being responsible for the warming climate over the past 100 years, Dr Buckee insists there is a natural explanation, based on the activity of the Sun. Solar activity can affect the cosmic rays that reach the Earth’s atmosphere, and this in turn affects the climate, he says.

Then again, it’s no longer chic to call it “global warming.” A switch to the term “climate change” conveniently covers all bases, so it’s still naughty to drink out of a plastic bottle or purchase a car larger than a golf cart – or purchase any car at all, for that matter. (No worries, our glorious leader is taking care of that with his big plans for GM.)

Homes on both coasts, ski trips to Aspen, irresponsible home improvements, and a member of the private jet set – yep, Laurie David is just the one I plan to call when I have serious questions about the environment.