Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005)

The Worst Film Ever

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Awesome Movie

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

It's amazing how long people can keep a lie going, even though they know it'll eventually blow up in their faces. A company "too big to fail", and people "too greedy to care". If the story of Enron is an example of anything, it's an example of how the love of money can destroy your moral compass. I don't think these people were born money-hungry manipulators, but once they got the idea in their heads, they threw their morals out the window and only saw dollar signs. From creating fake companies to dump their debt into, to manipulating California's energy and creating a crisis that cost billions of dollars. At the end of the day, it was all about money, and nothing else. Hopefully this stands as an example to any would-be corporate criminals out there that think they can get away with stuff like this, because you may for awhile, but all your house of cards needs is a spark in order to go up in flames.

The story of Enron, the energy company, and its rise and inglorious fall. We see its origins in the 1980s, how it was set up with energy deregulation in mind, and how it profited off the deregulation. Moreover, we see how it took accounting practices to the extremes, to the point that the senior executives were cooking the books. There is also coverage of the unethical practices of Enron' traders, particularly in the California electricity market. In the end it all comes crashing down, losing everyday, law-abiding employees their jobs, savings and pensions.Brilliant documentary. A great telling of how greed and hubris can lead to crime of the highest magnitude. Very well told. You can see how the illegalities just build. From legal mark-to-market accounting, the executives then start to overstate future profits. When these profits don't eventuate, rather than mark the profit down, they cover up the shortfall. Eventually the accumulated difference is so great that they feel they can't reverse it. Using company promo footage and presentations you can see how easy it must have been for investors and employees to fall for the lines.Not just an examination of corporate greed and lack of ethics but an examination of the baser instincts of mankind. So many cases of people choosing to do what was good for them, rather than what was right. The CFO, who was setting up all the dubious accounting schemes, was even skimming some of the company profit for himself! Thieves stealing from thieves.Highly engrossing. Told in very intriguing fashion by narrator Peter Coyote and written and directed by Alex Gibney (based on the book by Bethany McLean), while the subject is complex, it is reasonably understandable. Interesting for so many reasons too. The fact that they managed to hoodwink equity analysts for so long, the momentum effect - the more they got into it and the better they did, the less they could go back, the effects on investors and employees, the hubris on display. A truly great documentary, one that should be used in business schools and ethics classes.

I'll be the first to say, that I'm not totally clued up on the world of business, especially in terms of utilities and power, but I have to say that this film is a highly informative and hard hitting film that anyone, no matter what their interest, should find highly compelling.At it's heart, it exploits the downfalls and pitfalls of the Enron Corporation - arguably the most catastrophic bankruptcy in the history of the united states, with the redundancies of tens of thousands of employees worldwide, the crashing of stock (which it should be added staff heavily invested their own personal funds and pensions in), but not all before the MD's had all cashed in at it's amazingly high price.It contains past-employees accounts of the way the corporation was run, their opinions on Jeff Skilling and the fact that, at the hear of it, several senior figures within the company knew of it's downfalls. It makes for very compelling viewing at this 'highly stylised', which was nothing more than a very, very large pyramid scheme.At the start, I probably would've given this title a miss, but honestly, just watch a few minutes and I'm sure you'll be lured in - it makes for very interesting viewing.

Shock. That is the primary feeling this film will elicit in you. Shock at such blatant unethical misconduct on such a powerful corporate level. Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room is a documentary that chronicles the rise and fall of Enron, an energy company that practically ruled the world at one point due to fraud and faulty business practices that led to its eventual demise. The film is told through interviews with people who were at one point involved with Enron or have studied Enron to find out what made it fail. The evidence compiled so coherently in this film is sickening as it paints a perfect portrait of the lengths that corporate greed goes to. The film details a tragedy that not only deals with the economics of this corporation, but the psychological aspects that went into the process of such unethical practices.This film is structured very well and I commend it for its use of a purely chronological telling of the story of Enron. It starts from Enron's beginnings and its first steps up the ladder of success. It then continues to detail the company's growing success and how it all affected the stock market, all the while throwing in hints that misconduct was occurring amidst this seemingly perfect achievement. The finally the film starts to detail just where everything was going wrong and the moral code of the players in this film begin to crumble. We see every last bit of fraud and it is honestly quite frightening to see just how terrible some of the people working at Enron were. This of course all leads to Enron's downfall and the film strongly emphasizes just how hard this hit the economic world.Over the course of this film there is a lot of political and economic jargon thrown our way, and it can be a little difficult to keep up with. But overall it isn't difficult to get the gist of everything that is going on here, and by the end of the film it is easy to see just how bad these people are. There's nothing to make you question the validity of this film because, quite frankly, the facts are all laid out on the table before us and the director just connects the dots for us. And once the whole picture is put together it is absolutely stunning. Fraud on all different levels becomes evident, which is why the Enron scandal is considered to be the biggest corporate scandal in history, and rightfully so.If I had one tiff with this film it would be the interviewees. Gibney, the director of the film, interviews some very important and legitimate people, yet they are all on his side. I would have liked to see more people interviewed that were on Enron's side in order to get the situation from their point of view. Of course it is easy to decline an interview for a film that is going to chronicle the role you played in the biggest corporate scandal ever, so I can't blame the film itself for this issue. Plus, a lot of the people who could have been against Gibney in his argument are in jail or were in jail at the time this film was made. I would say that Gibney makes the most out of what he had, but where the real engaging content of this film comes from is really the archival footage from the news, trials, and even secret videotapes with incriminating evidence and just how well Gibney puts it all together.This is a fascinating documentary that frustrates as much as it intrigues. The Enron scandal is a complicated tale, but Gibney tells it in a very coherent and straightforward way that is as fascinating as it is shocking. Documentary filmmaking is an art, and Alex Gibney proves this by making true engaging art out of a story full of business and economics. This is a great film that tells a sickening story.