Visitors Review

Terry Lawson (2012-05-26 11:26)

Allow yourself the pleasure of being thoroughly entertained while being equally outraged by this movie.

Ravanne (2012-05-25 21:16)

A chilling account of capitalism run amock

In the movie "Wall Street" we got the saying that greed is good. But what happens when greed overtakes all other considerations? What happens when you take a powerful corporation with political clout and remove any hint of regulation? You get a disaster like Eron, which this documentary shows in vivid, often chilling detail.Having the luxury of nearly 2 uninterupted hours to lay out their case, the filmmakers present a damning array of evidence against Enron figures like Lay and Skilling that showed corporate arrogance and greed at its worst. It lays out the case that almost from the beginning, Eron lay the seeds of its own destruction. In the end, the corporation that influence state and national politics and counted a president as a close ally became nothing more than an elaborate pyramid scheme.There are many losers in this sad tale. The people of California that were so shamelessly gouged by Enron energy traders. The employees who lost their retirement savings while heads of their company pocketed millions, given 30 minutes to empty their desks and leave the building when Enron declaired bankrupcy. There are heroes in the form of the whistle blowers who had the courage to speak out against what the company they were working for was doing. And there are definite villins. Lay and his cronnies who pleaded ignorance while their employees manipulated accounts, hid the real economic health of the company from its shareholders and victimized all who had dealings with Enron. There are the accountants and banks, who when given the chance to rein in this rogue company instead went along for the ride since they were making too much money to derail the gravy train. And government officals who ignored the damage that Enron was leaving in its wake in the name of deregulation.The filmmakers had the skill to take corporate law, which can be dry and confusing to the average lay person, and allow it to be clearly understood. People watching this film will get a clear grasp of just what happened within this company and force us to ask the question of what protections do we have to prevent other companies that lack a moral compass from following Enron's example.Enron's motto for years was "Ask Why", to force people to think outside the box and consider what was never thought of before. This movie forces the audience to ask that same question as well.

Mary F. Pols (2012-05-25 01:40)

It puts the whole mess in focus and will likely have you stomping about afterward in righteous indignation at the crimes perpetrated on us -- particularly Californians -- by the corporate swindlers at Enron.

Marjorie Baumgarten (2012-05-24 11:25)

The movie helps the average American understand the nature of the shell games perpetuated by Enron and how 'synergistic corruptions' can corrupt absolutely.

(2012-05-22 22:19)

Capitalism Allowed to Run Amok

+++++This documentary is based on the best-selling book "The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron" (2003) by "Fortune" magazine reporters Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind.This film starts out with a stock analyst telling us this stunning information:"It had taken Enron 16 years to go from about $10 billion in assets to $65 billion in assets; it took them 24 days to go bankrupt."At the end of this film we are given equally stunning bankruptcy facts and other details:(1) 20,000 employees lost their jobs and medical insurance(2) Average severance pay: $4500(3) Top executives were paid bonuses totaling $55 million(4) In 2001, employees lost 1.2 billion in retirement funds(5) Retirees lost 2 billion in pension funds(6) Enron's top executives cashed in 116 million in stock(7) Criminal charges--Guilty charges: 15; Convictions and acquittals: 1; Pending cases: 11So what happened? How did the energy company Enron Corporation rise to become the seventh largest corporation in America only to lose everything and declare bankruptcy in December 2001? This intriguing documentary answers this question and does it well in a non-boring, understandable, informative, and entertaining style.This documentary is non-boring because of its well-picked soundtrack, snappy reenactments, interviews with former employees, whistleblowers, attorneys, accountants, stock analysts, etc., and its barrage of archival video clips, both news clips and Enron's in-house clips.What specific people will you see or hear in this documentary? Some people include the following: George Bush Sr., George Bush Jr., Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ken "Kenny Boy" Lay (Enron Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer or CEO), Jeff Skilling (Enron President and Chief Operating Officer or COO. Served briefy as CEO in 2001), Andy Fastow (Enron Chief Financial Officer or CFO), Gray Davis (former California Governor), Bethany McLean ("Fortune" magazine reporter), and Peter Elkind ("Fortune" magazine reporter).The documentary also includes actor Peter Coyote's sober, slightly sarcastic voice-over narration. His voice was perfect for this function.The DVD itself (one disc released in 2006) is perfect in picture and sound quality. It has almost fifteen interesting extras.Finally, I felt there was only one problem with this film. It reenacts the suicide of a former top Enron executive and lingers on it by showing his suicide note. This, I felt, was unnecessary.In conclusion, this absorbing documentary recounts "the corporate crime of the [twentieth] century" and shows how "the greatest innovation of the new economy was greed." Thus, it is not to be missed!!(2005; 1 hr, 50 min; wide screen; 15 scenes)+++++

(2012-05-22 12:46)

Get the right message

The knee-jerk reaction to watching this documentary might be to immediately pull all your retirement money and stuff it under your mattress then calling your congressman and demanding more regulation. Neither reaction would be wise nor would they be effective. The root message is not that deregulation is bad, the root issue is greed and greed is no less prevalent in the government that would seek to regulate business than it is in the business themselves - in fact, history would seem to support the notion that we have far more to fear from governments than from businesses or free markets. Regulating business with government control is not a solution any more than hiding your money under your mattress. Republicans, Democrats, and yes, even Libertarians are just as greedy as business leaders - giving them control is no safer than letting the market control itself.A better lesson to learn is that stated by a former Enron employee at the end of the movie when he suggested Enron's own motto - "ask why?" Be a wise investor and know the company in which you are investing. If you cannot understand how they make their money it does not necessarily mean you are too stupid to understand - it might just be you understand even better than they. Be a wise citizen as well and note how money influences your representatives - do not assume their rhetoric is entirely accurate but ask them difficult questions until you understand the issues. Do not respond with fear, respond with seeking understanding instead.An excellent documentary that makes you think and makes you ask, "why? " You will want to see this.

(2012-05-18 23:56)

The Who, What & Why of Enron's Massive Fraud.

"Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" is director Alex Gibney's take on the mess that was Enron, based on the book of the same name by Fortune magazine reporters Peter Elkind and Bethany McLean. Elkind and McLean are interviewed in the film, as are some former Enron executives including Amanda Martin-Brock, Mike Muckleroy, and Sherron Watkins, former Enron accountant John Beard, and former Enron traders. Stock analyst John Olson, one of the first to question Enron's financial health, and various writers and attorneys also articulate their views of Enron from the outside looking in. Former Enron CEOs Jeff Skilling and Kenneth Lay, who are on trial as of this writing, and Enron Chief Financial Officer Andy Fastow, who turned State's witness in exchange for a reduced sentence, are represented through their statements at Congressional hearings and through videotaped corporate speeches. The film focuses on those 3 individuals more than other Enron executives who may have been equally incompetent, probably because these 3 are suspected of being nefarious as well as foolish. It follows Enron's evolution from a natural gas company to a "logistics company" or quasi-brokerage or whatever it may have intended to be -does anyone even know?- from 1992-2002, approximately the period of Jeff Skilling's reign.I cannot say just how much material this documentary adds to Peter Elkind and Bethany McLean's book, as I have not read it. The film could not be nearly as detailed as the book, but Alex Gibney did make an effort to find new material for his audience. One startling bit of new material is tape-recorded conversations of Enron traders manipulating the power supply in California during the state's 2001 energy crisis. It's absolutely unreal -not to be missed. Director Alex Gibney holds a skeptical view of American corporate culture and laissez-faire economics. The film asks, "Was Enron the work of a few bad men, or the dark shadow of the American Dream?" He sees Enron as an exaggeration of what goes on every day in corporate America. Bethany McLean sees Enron's fraud and subsequent collapse as human tragedy: self-made, ambitious men and women who rose to great heights and were brought to ruin by their own enormous hubris and self-delusion. Both of these views are represented in the film, but not crammed down the audience's throat. They are food for thought, and the filmmakers obviously believe that Skilling, Lay, and Fastow broke the law, but, beyond that, they allow the audience to draw its own conclusions.The DVD (Magnolia 2006): Bonus features include 4 deleted scenes, 7 featurettes, "A Gallery of Enron Cartoons" (18 political cartoons), the entire text of 3 Fortune magazine articles about Enron including Bethany McLean's original 2001 article entitled "Is Enron Overpriced?", & an audio commentary by writer/director Alex Gibney. In "We Should All Ask Why?: Making the Enron Film" (14 min), Alex Gibney talks about his perspective in the film and Bethany McLean talks about Skilling, Lay, and Fastow. "Where Are They Now?" (3 min) is an update on 4 former Enron executives. "A Conversation with Bethany McLean" (7 ½ min) is footage from her interview that was left out of the movie. Interesting insight. "A Conversation with Peter Elkind" (5 min) is footage from his interview that was not in the movie. "HDNet's Higher Definition: Highlights from the Enron Show" (12 min) are interviews with McLean and Elkind hosted by Robert Wilonsky of "The Dallas Observer". "Firesign Theater: The Fall of Enron" (3 min) is a Houston radio program spoofing a Wagner opera as the saga of Enron's demise. In "Alex Gibney Reads Enron Skits" (41/2 min), Gibney reads the scripts of 2 of the Enron skits, similar to the one we see in the movie. These self-incriminating skits are one of the most bizarre things I've ever seen or heard in my life. In the audio commentary, director Alex Gibney discusses music, editing, what he left out and why, the people he interviewed, and his intentions with each scene. His personal view of Enron comes across more clearly than in the film itself. Subtitles for the film are available in Spanish.

Linda Cook (2012-05-18 12:11)

OK, I admit it. I didn't get the whole Enron thing a few years back.

(2012-05-15 22:33)

A good documentary on what is wrong with corporate America

With the bevy of Bernie Madoffs and other Captains of Corruption you could easily forget the scale of corruption that Enron represented just a few years ago. Up to that time the idea of a Fortune 50 company based on absolutely nothing was unthinkable. What this penetrating documentary does is expose the scale of that corruption and how the amoral culture of Enron, flowing from the top, affected everyone and everything about the company. If you don't think that personal ethics, character and morality are relevant in a corporate context; that somehow the market will weed out the grossly immoral through the "magic of free markets", think again. How anyone with a VP or higher title from this company is employable anywhere in this country as something other than a cleaning person is infuriating. Even more disturbing is the lack of regulatory response to this, or perhaps worse the creation of an accounting regime that added enormous costs to well-run honest businesses but did nothing to address the real underlying issues of Enron. As we now stare over the precipice and look at the abyss that similar institutions have brought us to the brink of, and then contemplate that even now no real regulatory reform has been enacted that would prevent such a crisis from happening again, you begin to realize what toothless dogs the regulatory agencies have become. One word of caution. I bought this product thinking it was a simple documentary. It is, but with a lot more language and other items that are more frequently found in non-documentary fare. That part of this was unnecessary and caught me off guard.

(2012-05-15 13:37)

An Admiration of Appearances

This movie doesn't begin to explain the executive manipulations that led to Enron's downfall. That's a difficult subject to explain. But I had heard a few news commentators summarize the ways in which subsidiaries had been created and funds shuffled between them to make it look as if the Company as a whole was reaping huge profits. I had hoped to learn more details about such shifty operations here. But you won't find out much about the how's from this documentary.And I'm not sure you'll learn much about the why's either. The movie presents patchwork biographies of the main players (and "players" is the right word for these executives). Learning about Jeff Skilling's love of competitive, dangerous sport and about Lou Pi's penchant for attending strip clubs does give some insight into their characters. However, none of what is presented about these men justifies the director's assertions about how "interesting" and "fascinating" they are. If anything, the film's bios would probably leave most viewers with a sense of how little and dull these men tended to be in their daily lives. However, something revealing about the Enron collapse does emerge, albeit unintentionally, in the director commentary for the DVD version of this documentary. You can hear Alex Gibney's tone of admiration underwriting this whole project. Yes, there is a sort of envy and approval that leaks through in his voice as he narrates the making of this film.I'm reminded of another movie, Deliberate Stranger, a dramatized account of the life of killer Ted Bundy. There's a character in that movie, played by George Grizzard, who oozes admiration for the young Bundy. He sees an ambitious young man who wears the right clothes, is attending the right law school, has the right political affiliations, and who seems to be on the fast-track to every sort of social and financial success. And that's all Grizzard sees, and all that he sees he envies.Not that I'm making a comparison between the deeds of the man in Deliberate Stranger and the deeds of the people in The Smartest Guys in the Room. However, there is a comparison that can be made between the primary reactions of the bystanders in the two films. In both cases, they admire appearances, they admire the macho traits in others, the symbols of superficial success that others clothe themselves in. They fall in step. Hardly anyone cares to see what lies underneath the trappings. No one complains until devastating loss is exposed.So even though the body of this film may not give you a clear sense of how the Enron scam gathered momentum - listen to the DVD bonus materials. Listen to the producers' and director's commentary. Maybe The Smartest Guys in the Room inadvertently shows how it could happen after all.

(2012-05-09 08:02)

Enron DVD

Well this did not work out the way I'd hoped. I could not use the DVD in either my brand new HD DVD player or my older one. Nor did it work in the DVD player at the political office where I wanted to show it either. It only worked on my computer. So I was not able to use it for the purpose I desired.

Frank Swietek (2012-05-08 21:43)

At times comes off as a bit too smart itself, almost smug in its often jokey post-mortem of the company's excesses, but on the whole it acquits itself remarkably well.

Joe Leydon (2012-05-06 03:35)

By turns amazing, amusing and appalling.

Duane Dudek (2012-05-05 12:42)

A primer on corporate malfeasance for dummies, clarifying the statistical thicket through illustration and mindful of Deep Throat's advice during Watergate to always follow the money.

(2012-05-01 17:00)

Great documentary

I'm not a fan of documentaries, especially ones about business or that genre. I watched this because it was free, I was bored and the reviews were really high.I watched this all the way through and had to say, that it's a movie that compels you to consider your own decision making process, your own ethics and morality. It's amazing what went on with Enron I remember clips and snippets of news on Enron, but I had never paid attention or really cared because I didn't know how it affected me or didn't feel the direct influence.Little did I know how big of a reach the corruption and lacking integrity this company and people force on many innocent people.The statement about the Electricity Company line man and his retirement getting up to 348k and ending up with 1200...because their accounts were frozen and there weren't allowed to touch it (while at the same time top Enron executives were moving theirs around)...that's enough to break anyone's heart.Here was a man who worked an honest living for a good portion of his life...and now he has nothing...what type of society is this?People joke about ethics and training at job places, I'm not exempt from that...but now you see why they're there...and if they really teach people what they need to? Is that enough? It's amazing and very sad what these people went through and what the top players did to people.To hear the Enron traders talk about California and seeing what resulted from their glib and greedy decisions is horrendous.This film really touched a nerve I wasn't aware I had. Very good and enlightening documentary.

Peter Travers (2012-04-30 21:30)

Alex Gibney's riveting documentary is a rape story, with the public trust as the victim.

(2012-04-28 07:01)

A great deal of new information not on the news. Interesting to know what happened.

The news did not really give justice to what was really happening with Enron during that time. Why it fell. How some people wondered why they did not have data like a normal company. This movie is just wonderful. It shows how they made a total joke of the American Stock Market and got away with it. Power outages in California were actually intentional by Enron. The story goes on obviously after the movie has been filmed. With that misterious death of Ken Ley. Sucide also resulted as a consequence of this crash. Many people have no savings yet has anyone gone to jail over this yet? Watch how much fun they were having in the hay day of Enron. How they played hard and how a few people got really rich while others were devistated. This is an imporatant movie. Then you might want to review the more recent news on the company to see where we are at now. Where is Jeffrey Skilling now?? Last I knew he still was not in Jail. Who will be punished for this or is it okay because of our new corporate climate? Okay in the sense of the law of the USA that is. Martha Stewart went to jail and served time will anyone for this???

Karina Montgomery (2012-04-27 17:07)

My audience grumbled, hissed, clapped, and booed. ...it defies you not to become emotionally involved; by the end you feel as drained as an Enron janitor's 401(k).

(2012-04-22 00:12)

Critique of Enron Documentary

This review is from: Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (DVD) The documentary "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room", is a must see for all those considering a career in business as well as those aspiring to careers charged with enforcement of white collar crime as well as corporate regulations in government. The detailed description of the Enron corporate scandal, bankruptcy and criminality was done with meticulous care and with attention to the multiple places where government and business leadership failed the stockholders, the employees and the country in general. The Enron business catastrophe has accurately depicted the consequences of the excesses of capitalism run wild with extreme attention to profits without concern for the ethically consequences of ones actions as individuals or as a corporate entity. It was an eye opening experience for all of the un-indicted lawyers, bankers and SEC regulators whom by their collective lack of action served as enablers to corporate crime. The recent ideological fad of deregulation and the time tested deadly sin of avarice are portrayed as the root of the problem. This cinematic work is highly educational as well as entertaining.

(2012-04-21 06:24)

Fantastic

This documentary is indicative of what has happened at the various financial institutions on Wall Street that has led to the collapse of our economy. The Commodities Futures Modernization Act, Mark to Market Accounting, repeal of Glass Steagall, etc., are THE causes. The collapse never would have happened because a small percentage of people foreclosed on their mortgages. It was the what was done with those mortgages (how they were sold and traded) that was the real crime. This documentary shows what happened at Enron. The audio tapes of the traders and what they did is astounding and infuriating. Most of this stuff never made it to the news media. You did not see 1/10th of the criminal behaviour that went on at this place on your "TV News". I highly recommend this documentary to anyone who wants to see how things work....and how they won't change until this legislation is changed to prevent this type of behaviour.