Festooned with sub-prime mortgages and credit-default swops, director Adam McKay’s take on the 2008 economic crash makes heroes of the outsiders who saw it coming, bet against the market and made a killing. At over 2 hours of tightly scripted didacticism it should be a feat of sheer will to sit through the arcane terminology that helped shield the financial wizards who hoodwinked the west. But McKay’s approach is ordered and direct with enough waspish humour to make a decent sized fist of it all. Some good bits of over-wrought acting from Christian Bale and Steve Carrell, with able support from Gosling and Pitt. As sure footed and able as can be, but hardly transparent, as modern terminology would put it. Using other people’s money to bet against the ‘safe as houses’ mortgage market, these greedy fellas helped bring the whole thing down even quicker and with more painfully than might otherwise have been the case. And back in 2016 all is bubbling away quite nicely again.