As somebody who routinely skips over the newspaper's business section, I'll confess that I found the prospect of a documentary about Enron, the energy company that imploded in the spectacular scandal, less than enticing. Even I already knew the basic storyline: in their greed, the managers overextended themselves, perpetuated a gigantic fraud, and eventually the entire house of cards collapsed, taking billions of dollars and the employees' retirement funds with them. Was this really worth 110 minutes of celluloid?
Would you buy a kilowatt from these men? Ken Lay and Jeff Skillig.
As it turns out, writer and director Alex Gibney does an admirable job with the material and manages to tell an epic tragedy of avarice and deception, complete with larger-than-life characters and a gripping narrative. Thanks to catchy filmmaking and one hell of a dramatic storyline, "The Smartest Guys in the Room" doesn't contain a single boring moment. Based on the book "The Smartest Guys in the Room" by Bethany McLean and Peter Elking, the film makes even the more intricate concepts lucid enough to grasp, such as the "mark-to market accounting" that allowed Enron to exaggerate earnings and the labyrinthine web of fake companies shuttling imaginary money back and forth between them.
With a well-picked soundtrack, snappy reenactments, and interviews with former employees and whistleblowers, "The Smartest Guys in the Room" shines a light on the viciously aggressive corporate culture reigning at Enron (and the strippers and the mudbike races that came with it.) The movie highlights the company's connections to the Bush family and their influence on the deregulation policies that made the fraud possible in the first place. It also draws illuminating parallels between the California energy crisis and the Milgram Experiment; audio recordings show that traders, employing schemes known by such delightful names as "Death Star," had no qualms whatsoever as they shut down power plants to spur the already skyrocketing prices even higher.
The film is at its best when it portrays the the major players: Bush-buddy Kenneth "Kenny Boy" Lay and CEO Jeff Skilling. They come across as almost larger-than-life characters, deluded by their own ideology that they refuse to see the evil they have wrought--even while everything around them collapses. The shocking details that are carefully accumulated make for a terrific cautionary tale. Watching "The Smartest Guys in the Room" feels something like rubbernecking at a pileup of Hummer stretch limos: a fascinating and ugly portrait of unfettered capitalism running amok.
