In a recent Vanity Fair interview, Michael Lewis, the writer behind a 2010 Wall Street book about the 2007 economic crash, revealed that director Adam McKay had made a pseudo-blackmail deal with his studio to adapt Lewis’s story in return for directing a revival of an early 2000s ‘Will Ferrell is still relevant and fresh’ classic comedy. Two films were produced from this deal; the first was an ensemble cast in an average and occasionally patronising portrayal of a high-stakes professional industry that didn’t quite live up to expectations - the other film was Anchorman 2.

The Big Short follows a group of various financial ‘outsiders’ who predict the 2007 collapse of the housing market, and consequentially bet against the banks to make money if an economic ‘atomic bomb’ were to happen. Do not fret however, because The Big Short is witty in places, although less a comedy and more a hard-hitting encyclopaedia of financial fraud and corruption that softens the blow with the occasional joke.

The Big Short is held together by its stylised direction, and unflinching screenplay, both by Adam McKay. The editing is fast and clever and fits smoothly with the film’s high pace, but The Big Short is a little long and its commitment to never settling can be exhausting at times. The scenes are interwoven with bold, yet fittingly naïve, visual and audio snapshots of the early 2000s that are incredibly effective, if not just because it may be the first film to combine George Bush, Britney Spears, Mark Twain and Ludacris in a montage that looks like it belongs to a low budget conspiracy documentary from the dark corners of Netflix.

Film should not be criticised for the audience not understanding the logistics behind it, and The Big Short does not really hold back. In some scenes, to help the audience, Ryan Gosling will stare down the lens and into your soul to explain various forms of mortgages - which, in all fairness, is just about enough to grasp your attention back just as it’s about to slip into the abyss of home equity loans and AAA ratings. On occasion the explanations can feel a little patronising, but although it may hurt your ego, having some concepts explained through the medium of Jenga or Selena Gomez is incredibly necessary.

Christian Bale is the Anton Chigurh, Heath Ledger’s Joker or BB-8 of this film, in that Bale’s scenes as Michael Burry are the parts you look forward to most when your mind wanders off as the characters head to the fourth financial conference in an hour - although his musical taste may give you what I shall refer to as a ‘whiplash headache’. Since 2013 Brad Pitt seems to have made a career of acting in the same role - a bizarre, almost benevolent, guide who is only there to morally prod the film’s characters when needed, with as much screen time as the credits (see 12 Years a Slave, The Counsellor). Here, his nuance and subdued characterisations stand out from the exaggerated traits of his fellow financers, yet it’s still a glorified cameo in essence.

Steve Carrell gives the weakest performance, mainly due to the conception of his character Mark Baum. The treatment of Baum’s past is so heavy-handed it makes the character repeatedly shouting ‘I don’t want to talk about it’ come across more like Simba on cocaine instead of what could have been a poignant glance into the dark realities of Wall Street. His character rarely rises above his anger, and the slotting in of a wife (poor Marisa Tomei) for two scenes does little to humanise him. Often he seems to spew phrases like ‘ripping ordinary people off’ as if they came directly out of ‘how to get your audience to like you 101’.

To make a fleeting reference to the current cinematic zeitgeist, in a film about rich white men - and with the risk of making a potentially unrelated statement - it is rather baffling how a film which is quite good, but not great, can achieve such awards success as The Big Short has.

There is one element of the concept that should be questioned, and without revealing too much, is that in a film about the economic death knell of millions sounding due to the recklessness of the few, it feels like the characters should come out with more than moral scars. However, to paraphrase and ‘de-profane’ an excellent quotation in the film, the truth is like poetry – because no one wants to hear it. In all, The Big Short will leave you feeling slightly deflated, and you may wish that they had lied just a little bit.