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Taking a deeper look at current and past films and how they relate to the world today.

Jonathan Kim is an independent film critic who writes and produces film reviews for Uprising and other outlets. He is a former co-producer at Brave New Films.

Read his reviews online at ReThinkReviews.net. Watch his videos at www.youtube.com/user/jsjkim, and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/ReThinkReviews. ReThink Reviews’ theme song is by Restavrant.

(Jonathan Kim couldn’t resist the opportunity to review ‘Chasing Madoff’, so today’s ReThink Reviews strays into the horrors of recent non-fiction, you-can’t-make-this-stuff-up, events. )

Chasing Madoff

On December 11, 2008, Bernie Madoff turned himself in to the FBI for running a Ponzi scheme worth tens of billions of dollars, making it one of the biggest crimes in the history of the world. The next year, Madoff pleaded guilty to 11 federal felonies, ensuring that he’d spend the rest of his life in prison. But Madoff’s story doesn’t end there. And how could it, especially with the lingering mystery of how someone could conduct such a massive swindle, worth almost 65 billion dollars, and gone undetected for more than 20 years?

The answer, sadly and maddeningly, is that it didn’t, and the documentary ‘Chasing Madoff’ retells the story of a man who uncovered Madoff’s deceptions in 1999, then desperately blew the whistle until he was almost out of breath.

That whistleblower was Harry Markopolos, a Boston investment analyst who was asked in 1999 if he could figure out how Madoff’s funds managed to stay consistently profitable over so many years regardless of market conditions. As Markopolos claims, it only took him five minutes to realize the obvious: it WASN’T possible, meaning that the world’s largest hedge fund was a fraud.

Markopolos and some like-minded associates contacted the Securities and Exchange Commission, explained their findings, told the SEC where to look and the questions to ask to expose Madoff’s scheme, and figured the matter would be dealt with swiftly, considering the seriousness of the crime.

But instead, the SEC did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, and that’s a phrase you hear, in some form or another, throughout ‘Chasing Madoff’. At several points, Markopolos presents the SEC with increasingly detailed evidence explaining the workings of the Ponzi scheme, yet it never triggers an SEC investigation, even though Markopolos had basically already done it on his own.

Despite the size and implications of the crime, the media was also strangely uninterested in exposing Madoff. But most of the blame in the film for failing to stop Madoff is directed at the SEC, to the point where it seems they should be considered accomplices for allowing the Ponzi scheme to continue for years after Markopolos exposed it, which made the eventual damage from the scheme’s inevitable collapse much, much worse. Sadly, we’re left wondering if the SEC was in cahoots with Madoff or is simply inept to an unfathomable degree, neither of which is acceptable.

Director Jeff Prosserman tells Markopolos’ story, which is based on Markopolos’ best-selling book ‘No One Would Listen’, as if it were a detective story, which is not a bad idea. However, by going overboard on this, it often gives the impression that Prosserman is not convinced that the facts of the case are interesting enough and must be juiced with quick cuts and film noir imagery.

Prosserman also has Markopolos play himself in re-enactments as Markopolos increasingly begins to fear for his safety due to the vast sums of money at stake and the powerful, possibly criminal elements involved. The problem is that Markopolos isn’t an actor, and scenes showing Markopolos carrying a gun, practicing at a firing range, and checking his car for bombs are awkward and feel like efforts to add more tension and drama.

A film like 2010’s Oscar-winning documentary ‘Inside Job’ shows that the facts of our multi-faceted economic debacle are interesting enough on their own, and I wonder what a more accomplished, confident director would have done with this story. Still ‘Chasing Madoff’ is a valuable film that sheds needed light on the fact that Wall Street has bought off or weakened the watchdogs who are supposed to prevent the next economic crash, making you wonder how many more Bernie Madoff’s are out there, and which one we’ll be hearing about next.

‘Chasing Madoff’ is open in select theaters.