Best movie of this year hands down!

Just perfect...

I wanted to but couldn't!

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

I worked as an auditor at Big4 for several years, and my fiancée is a former investment banker and PE investor. We both found this movie to be very true and realistic when describing the stress and intensity that people face when working on Wall Street. We related to him and felt him pain! Not that what he did was right, but the movie did an excellent job presenting the Wall Street stress and reality which most of the Wall Street movies fail to do. What am I talking about? The extremely high expectations: you are never good enough, you can never stop, and there is always more profit to be generated. The way that he was treated: no matter how well you do, your direct boss will give you more pressure because your performance is related to their bonus, although they haven't contributed a thing in the process besides telling you to come in to work on Sunday during a funeral weekend.Anyway, if you are interested in a career on Wall Street or Big 4, please watch this movie, so you will know what you are getting yourself into!

A great portrayal of Nick Leeson's life. The beginning as a small lackey, only good for debt collections where he satisfied his bosses, the career jump to the head of a small share trader group, executing trades for customers of the Barrings Bank ending in total chaos because of too risky trades on behalf of the bank. At first Leeson decided only for the quite riskless arbitrage, but later he started with enormous speculations on currencies losing about one billion dollars and causes the bankruptcy of the traditional Barrings Bank. Of course the managers of Barings in London didn't stop Leasons business in Southeast Asia as long as his trades were successful, despite he was the head trader and inspector of his own business, which nobody could understand. At the end Leeson was a victim of hubris and misbelief in his own abilities, a deeply human misbehavior. I think director James Dearden could not have find a better actor than Ewan McGregor for the role of Nic Leeson. His acting was realistic and of course his appearance as a banker was great. A successful and well-made film.

If you're into stock trading and if you've read Nicholas Leeson, it might help you enjoy this movie. If you're not, you might need to view a couple of times before the story grows on you.I'm still not sure how I can summarize best the story for you: Ewan McGregor plays Nick Leeson, a stock trader for England's Fairbank is given a mission in New Delhi. He builds up a team with people who know nothing about stock trading and together they'll play with the Nikkei. As they're "playing", mistakes are made by Nick's team and he wants to cover them up by opening up an account called "88888". Soon, he'll start gambling with the bank's own money. Unfortunately, the losses grow bigger and bigger until the bank goes broke.Since there is no real action, and it's really told like a story and not like a movie, you really have to rely on the actors' skills to appreciate the movie.

I spent twenty years working in the City of London and was actually working for Barings at time of the scandal. Naturally it shook the city, I will always remember the Monday morning, cutting through the press corps outside the building asking such idiot questions like 'Have you heard the news about Barings ?' But back to the film, it tells the story of Nick Leeson the man who broke Barings. He tells of all the problems he suffered with untrained staff, mistakes, and how he tried to cover for his staff. Nothing was ever his fault. This part of the film was pure fiction, mistakes always get made and the mistake Kim made at the start would not necessarily have resulted in her firing. Nick himself remains blameless in the film when what he should have been doing was telling his boss to hire some decent people. The fault with the Barings scandal of course lies with the management. They believed it because they wanted to. No dealer can make 20 million in a week unless he is gambling in excess of 2 billion or committing a fraud. A good film for those uninitiated in the way the financial world works but not totally accurate. I hear Nick Leeson is working for a football club in Ireland now. I harbour no grudges for the fact I didn't get my entire bonus that year or the fact ING made me redundant when they took Barings over !!!