Inside Job is a film which rewards a level of engagement rarely demanded at the cinema. A comprehensive account of the world economic crisis of 2008, director Charles Ferguson’s documentary is uncompromisingly dense. Fortunately its prolific fact-deployment  is complemented by an absorbing balance of clarity, humour, and sheer interest.

The straightforward format that Inside Job assumes - that of successive interviews with bankers, economic experts, and advisors spliced with more general descriptions of events, could easily have become monotonous. The film manages to avoid dryness predominantly with the rather affecting importance which it rightly attaches to its subject matter. The absence of a Michael Moore or Louis Theroux figure to add a more personal touch is felt for the opening few minutes, but is soon forgotten in light of the film’s off-screen, but nonetheless Paxman-like interviewer of credit crunch culprits. In one instance, Columbia economist Frederic Mishkin, amidst feeble mumbles, attempts to explain his conspicuous departure from the Federal Reserve Bank just as the financial crisis was becoming apparent, by the notion that his duties elsewhere were more important - “a textbook needed revising”. Laudably, the documentary appears to have consciously shirked any incentives to dumb-down, preferring intellectual vigour to greater commercial appeal. Any moments of humour are products of this ethos, reflective more of the genuine ironies and hypocrisies which the film is so effective at revealing, than of any contrived attempt to amuse.

Inside Job benefits from the fascinating narrative which it documents. It is the story of the past thirty years of financial deregulation, and particularly of the more recent developments which allowed far too much freedom for banks to borrow and lend. The resultant crisis cost over $20 trillion, caused millions to lose their jobs and homes, and could have very easily spun into a wholesale global financial collapse. Besides disinclining one from a career in banking, Inside Job is a masterful piece of documentary filmmaking. Free of the polemics of Moore et al., and entirely credible and authoritative in its account, it is as critical of Clinton and Obama as it is of Reagan and Bush. The sterile offices which form the backdrop of its various interviews do not make Inside Job a great cinematic experience, but its disarming representation of the still extant problems of world finance wholeheartedly does.