Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Beautiful, moving film.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

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.

In 2001, the massive Enron company goes bankrupt leading to a criminal scandal. Kenneth Lay founded the company in 1985 amidst Texas deregulation implemented by the Bushes. There are questionable schemes. There are massive gambling that led to hidden losses. Jeffrey Skilling uses murky accounting practices to pump up the numbers. Executive Lou Pai uses company money for his stripper habit and leaves with $250 million. They game California's deregulated electricity market with some disgusting comments. CFO Andrew Fastow deliberately hides the increasing debt with shell companies. It all collapses in a massive loss. This is in-depth and shows the ugliness of greed. I wouldn't even call it corruption since that seems to be what they intend to do. It is almost inevitable. It is in reality a criminal organization. Whatever small amount of high-minded capitalist ideals of deregulation is quickly lost with the need and greed for money.

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.

Whoever wants to understand the roots of today's economic melt-down , must see this documentary,which must be viewed as a veritable document not only of an era that unfortunately DID NOT go away, but especially of the limitless potential of human greed and evil ,where every trick is studied and implemented , all then packaged in nebulous and vague ,but socially accepted and desired 'wrappings ' like intelligence, genius , bravery ,thinking outside the box , as was the Enron's main motto- Ask why. It is unbelievable how easily financial control simply fails, as a good marriage – read connections-read blat , 'fakelaki' etc.-is enough to change everything held secret,untouchable by societies through the time immemorial -the law ,which is the basic and only bulwark against chaos and barbarism , which , again , seems to be sweeping across the board , continents and races.I am eagerly waiting for Enron's spiritual brother, that is a documentary , based on the life and time of the greatest crook in history – B. Madoff, where the special emphasis should be given to the complete lack of any control ,where the supervisory body even got to be terribly afraid of the aforementioned 'genious '- the word by the way denotes an evil spirit ! - with the degree in –what else – economics,which is willy-nilly obviously the socially desired 'education 'for the totally wicked and really totally degenerated and basest in humanity the world over.As if the sadists won long long time ago