Review 243: Arbitrage

Arbitrage is an intense, thought provoking thriller, a fascinatingly, penetrating character study as well as a showcase for an superbly excellent performance form Richard Gere.

Robert Miller (Richard Gere) is a successful financial businessman with a loving wife Ellen (Susan Sarandon) and a smart daughter, Brooke (Brit Marling) ready to take over the family business. Professional secrets involving illegal fraudulent activities start coming out at the same time that Robert's personal secrets take a turn for the worse and threaten to derail everything he has achieved.

The plot is fantastic, it has so many themes that I literally can't describe but for the most part it's a staory about a wealthy man who makes a couple of bad choices and you watch the unraveling if his life and it also deals with themes such control, financial and moral coruption, Creative accounting, study of characters around us and I think the title suggests the subject, arbitrage which is the practice of taking advantage of a price difference between two or more markets: striking a combination of matching deals that capitalize upon the imbalance, the profit being the difference between the market prices.

Control: Robert Miller runs a successful business but makes small compramises in the choices he makes and everyone around him to do what he wants to do.

Financial and Moral coruption/Creative accounting: Miller uses clients money to save his company from bankruptcy and in order to cover an investment loss and avoid being arrested for fraud.
The study of characters around us: Miller thinks everyone around him can't see what he's doing but as we see in a brilliant character moment with Ellen Miller, they aren't. The film also asks some pretty deep questions such as What are the ethics of our time? What are the boundries of acceptable behaviour?

Writer/director Nicholas Jarecki direction is stylish, the cinematography is gorgeous and captures the beauty of New York, the score by Cliff Martinez is terrific, the production design is splendid and captures the reaness and the texture of in upper class New York, the costumes are terrific, the make up is rich, the props are splendid and the ending was brilliant.

The acting is terrific, Richard Gere gives one the best performances in recent years playing Robert Miller. Outwardly, he appears to have it all: a loving family and he's the hedge fund manager of a hugely successfuly company that he's about to sell to a major bank for a huge profit.
As the film goes on a the layers start to unravel, we find that it's in fact a facade and he's in fact at his breaking point.
Miller is a man who has done some pretty moraly dubious things such as fraud, adultery and manslaughter and is willing to throw people under the bus in order to cover them up. Yet Jarecki gos to great lengths to establish him as

Susan Sarandon is just wonderful as Ellen Miller,

Tim Roth is absolutely fabulous as Det. Bryer, 

Brit Marling is luminous and lovely as Brooke Miller

Nate Parker is also wonderful as Jimmy Grant. He's just a guy trying to put his life back together.

and the rest of the cast is great.

Arbitrage is a tense thought provoking thriller and another one of those films that really gets you thinking, 5/5.

The Anonymous Critic.