- Listen to the entire program<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/p>\n
![\"Rethink](\"\/home\/graphics\/rethink_reviews_small.jpg\")
<\/a>Taking a deeper look at current and past films and how they relate to the world today. <\/strong> <\/p>\nJonathan 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. <\/em> <\/p>\n
Read his reviews online at ReThinkReviews.net<\/a>. Watch his videos at www.youtube.com\/user\/jsjkim<\/a>, and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com\/ReThinkReviews<\/a>. ReThink Reviews’ theme song is by Restavrant<\/a>. <\/p>\n
Unraveled<\/strong><\/p>\n
Marc Dreier isn\u2019t Bernie Madoff. Madoff\u2019s ponzi scheme was the biggest financial fraud in world history, stealing tens of billions from thousands of investors, while Dreier defrauded a small number of wealthy clients and hedge funds out of approximately $400 million. But with crimes of this size, it\u2019s close enough, and the documentary \u2018Unraveled\u2019 is, in many ways, the Bernie Madoff movie we never got. <\/p>\n
\u2018Unraveled\u2019 follows the 30 days before Dreier\u2019s sentencing while he\u2019s under house arrest in his fabulous Manhattan penthouse. In those conversations, we not only hear how and why Dreier committed his crimes, but we also get to see the face and hear the voice of a man who is taking responsibility for his actions while still grappling with the enormity of his crime and the consequences for both himself and his family.<\/p>\n
When the Madoff scandal exploded, most people couldn\u2019t understand how anyone, both morally and practically could steal that much money. But with Dreier, both are laid out plainly. As the economy boomed, the intelligent and ambitious Dreier wanted a bigger piece of the action. So he decided to open his own law firm, but without the credit to rent swanky office space and hire a team of lawyers to attract wealthy clients, Dreier borrowed the money using the name, reputation, and good credit of one of his wealthy clients. <\/p>\n
Instead of paying the money back, Dreier borrowed more and more, starting offices around the world and living a luxurious lifestyle \u2014 including multiple homes, a yacht, an expensive art collection, and a star-studded charity \u2014 that would provide proof that he was someone worth doing business with. But the firm\u2019s income couldn\u2019t match its debts, and as creditors came calling, Dreier orchestrated increasingly risky and desperate schemes to forestall the inevitable, including impersonating representatives of the companies he was defrauding. The details of Dreier\u2019s swindle are recreated using animated illustrations drawn in a striking comic book style.<\/p>\n
But the real Dreier is a man imprisoned in his castle under the watch of armed guards, abandoned by everyone but his legal team and his college-age son, as the clock ticks down to his sentencing. It\u2019s this quiet period \u2014 as Dreier is left alone to contemplate what he did, the freedoms he\u2019ll lose, and how much of his kids\u2019 lives he\u2019ll be missing \u2014 that we never got from Bernie Madoff, making \u2018Unraveled\u2019 a fascinating case study of the kind of personality that would commit such a monumental crime. <\/p>\n
Madoff was painted as a monster, a villain, and a sociopath, and very little has challenged that. The Madoffs went into hiding, Bernie\u2019s apologies were seen as self-serving and inauthentic, and later statements by Bernie and his wife about how difficult the scandal had been for their family didn\u2019t garner much sympathy. We never got to see the quiet, lonely moments Madoff must\u2019ve had as the weight and consequences of his crimes bore down on him. <\/p>\n
In \u2018Unraveled\u2019, we see those moments with Dreier. While the easiest and most satisfying thing would be to see men like Dreier and Madoff as simply evil, \u2018Unraveled\u2019 shows Dreier as an ambitious, intelligent man who took a shortcut, got in over his head, then became trapped by the monster he created. And Dreier dares to pose a difficult but important question to the audience \u2014 whether the reason we don\u2019t steal isn\u2019t based on morality, but a fear of getting caught, and that, as Dreier says, \u201cIt\u2019s easy to say you would never cross the line, but the line is presented to very few people.\u201d<\/p>\n
The only time I ever felt any sympathy for Bernie Madoff is when his son, Mark, committed suicide after two years of shame for his father\u2019s crimes. But with \u2018Unraveled\u2019, you might feel some sympathy because you see Dreier as a human being, not a supervillain. And that\u2019s important, because in the end, the crimes of Wall Street, which we\u2019re still paying for, were committed by people, not monsters. The more we\u2019re able to understand the mindset and conditions that allow such crimes, like lax regulation and a culture that reveres short term gain, the better we\u2019ll be at preventing future financial crimes, making \u2018Unraveled\u2019 is an invaluable tool in that struggle. <\/p>\n
\u2018Unraveled\u2019 is unrated and is in select theaters and Video On Demand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rethink-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29106\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}