User Reviews

Le Capital follows the course of a newly-appointed CEO of a hypothetical major French bank with global reach. The protagonist is a smart, ambitious and hard-nosed executive, but the constant pressures he faces at the helm of Phenix Bank from his board, which didn't favor his taking command but feel they can control him, from his employees who are unclear as to the direction in which he wants to take Phenix Bank compared to his cancer-stricken predecessor, and most keenly from his shareholders, particularly a U.S.-located hedge fund, almost want to make you sympathize with him. But his ruthless, hard character and the cold but correct way he treats his family ultimately prevents this identification. (I've read that the actor portraying the CEO is a comedian on French television so this must be quite a switch for him.)

The heart of the film is the pressure that the American hedge fund, as represented by a character who would put Gordon Ghecko to shame, places on the CEO to initiate drastic actions to pump the stock price. Apparently, the hedge fund has acquired a dominant position in Phenix's stock that enables it to virtually dictate policy to the bank, or at least to this CEO. Of course the dictation is smoothed by the fact that he's promised huge bonuses to implement these "suggestions". The initial directive is to fire 10,000 of the bank's employees which he does gratified by the promised bonus and seemingly unconcerned by the fact that "his" bank does not appear to have an excess labor force. The final "directive" is for Phenix Bank to make an acquisition of a troubled Japanese bank with poor assets. At last some resistance begins to form in our CEO because he senses he'll be the "fall guy" for such an ill-advised acquisition and that the adverse impact of such an acquisition on Phenix's stock price would apparently enable the hedge fund to acquire complete control of the bank at a cheaper price. (One could nitpick and say that the filmmakers in their anti-capitalist bias are confusing corporate raiders who do hostile takeovers with hedge funds who are content to be "activist" investors and prod the company's management and not manage the company. Moreover, why would the hedge fund want to manage the troubled assets of the Japanese bank as part of the larger Phenix Bank, particularly if they were acquired with cash most likely burdening Phenix Bank with much increased debt? A stock-for-stock exchange might affect the target bank's shareholders with a lower value for their stock.) What the CEO ultimately does about the Japanese bank and his erstwhile hedge fund friends I'll leave for those who choose to view this film. I, for one, enjoyed it. I found the banking scenes to be interesting and the characterizations to be provocative although in some cases over the top. For non-French speakers like this English speaker, I think you'll need to go back a bit a number of times on a DVD to refresh the sub-titles in order to follow the financial ramifications of the plot.

The filmmakers' attitude toward high-finance capitalism is most apparent in an amusing but over-the-top scene where our banking CEO says in an opulent boardroom among well-dressed board members that our new paradigm is to "rob from the poor and give to the rich" to which he's met with enthusiastic applause. I'm sure the vast majority of bankers don't believe this or follow this goal explicitly; however, their actions may sometimes indeed perform this transfer of wealth, e.g., the LIBOR interest rate manipulation which served to enrich banks and their usually wealthy shareholders (but also including 401k holders) but increased the cost to homeowners with variable-rate mortgages. I would guess the basic question underlying films like "Capital" is whether economic systems like capitalism promote the kind of greed and exploitation we see in "Capital" or whether greed-filled and exploitative people perform their misery in any kind of system (for you socialists out there, socialism did not really end greed and exploitation; it was just manifested in another form, the form of political power and perks). Perhaps the filmmakers' message is that financial capitalism allows monetary greed to be more fully realized.

Marc Tourneuil (Gad Elmaleh) is an ambitious executive of the French Phenix Bank. When the CEO becomes incapacitated with cancer, he handpicks Tourneuil as the replacement CEO. He's surrounded by enemies. When he starts pushing to be more than a figurehead for the old CEO, he even loses that support. The only support comes from an American hedge fund minority shareholder Dittmar Rigule (Gabriel Byrne). The problem is that his support comes with strings attached. There is also underwear supermodel Nassim that has caught the eye of the married Tourneuil.

This starts off well. I like the corporate intrigue and the paranoid backstabbing. Some of the arguing from the wife and their family does border on naivety. I like the morally dubious protagonist better. However the movie slips as it tries to shoehorn a Hollywood happy ending. It would be better to keep a noir edge to the end. The last half has too many simplistic turns. I would be much happier with a murkier darker progression.

Let's continue to rob the poor and make the rich richer!" this is what about the modern day banking and financing (undre)world, banks are just like Mafia, bankers Mafiosos, banks' CEO in private jet doing country hopping, hiring retired cop to do the dirt-digging and trashcan/dumpster diving jobs, committing some adultery flirting with high priced model- hooker, back-stabbing while self defense, behind the door deals, estranged to parents, wives, kids, fence off hostile takeover, firing the employees as many as possible, no gender and age are safe, laying off more, the stockholders will be happier and the stock will be rocketing. so, indeed "money is not a tool but a master, serving him well and he'll reward you generously". so let's continue to rob the poor blind and serve the rich loyally. what a great movie, very tense and thrilling, great montage, lot of exotic locations in different countries. this is a very nicely done movie, quite worth watching.

LE CAPITAL is an interesting film to compare with Martin Scorsese's WOLF OF WALL STREET, released a year later. Both contain similar subject-matter (the rapacity of the modern-day banking world) inspired by recent events in major financial centers such as London, Paris and New York. Nonetheless Costa-Gavras' film works much better as an indictment of contemporary greed as compared to Scorsese's. There are several reasons for this: unlike Leonardo DiCaprio in the Scorsese work, Marc Tourneuil (Gad Elmaleh) is a genuinely unsympathetic central character. His expression (in public, at least) seldom changes as he ruthlessly consolidates his position as CEO of Phenix Bank, a Paris-based institution with aspirations to participate on the world stage. Anyone getting in his way is ruthlessly brushed aside; even those who support him in his quest for power are not exempt. His personal life is treated equally ruthlessly - although married to Diane (Natacha Régnier), he shows no scruples in his relentless pursuit of supermodel Nassim (Liya Kebede), even though she strings him along with equal ruthlessness. At the same time Marc is well aware that he is putting on an act; there are several moments where he uses voice-over to communicate his true feelings to the audience, and he sometimes addresses them direct to camera. He is nothing more than a prisoner of ambition; in the dog-eat-dog world of high finance, he has to play the game, however much he dislikes it. Sometimes LE CAPITAL does seem a little over-moralistic in tone - the sequences involving tyro banker Maud Baron (Céline Sallette)(who sacrifices a promising career in Phenix Bank's London office in order to expose the corruption lurking beneath a proposed business deal) tend to be rather static, especially the one taking place next to the Seine, where Maud invites Marc to give up his money-dominated existence and pursue the path of righteousness. On the other hand Costa-Gavras' film makes intelligent use of modern technology: much of the communication, especially between Marc and his US-based patron Dittmar Rigule (Gabriel Byrne) is done via videophone. This strategy indicates how debased the financial world has become; no one favors face-to-face talk anymore, but would rather put a screen in front of them, that can be switched off at will. The narrative of LE CAPITAL unfolds swiftly, making intelligent use of high-tech locations in London, Paris and New York. Its subject might be familiar, but its impact remains powerful.

It's interesting that Costa-Gavras chose to make a personal diatribe against finance through his "Capital" since he's most renowned for his politically-oriented themes that contributed to such memorable movies as "Z" or "Missing". I say 'interesting' because "The Capital" reminded me of another finance-themed film from another political director: Oliver Stone's "Wall Street", THE movie that summed up the inner amorality of finance through the iconic : 'Greed, for a lack of better word, is good'

I wasn't surprised that the political director made his cinematic "J'accuse" against finance, since it proved to be true ruler of our liberal world, whose only alibi for existence is to pretend there's no better alternative. After the economical crisis, the Goldman Sachs and Bernard Madoff' cases, after the French President claimed to have made finance his enemy, finance was definitely political matter, and if Costa-Gavras makes a film about it, it's certainly worth our attention. The question is: what would the film show that "Wall Street" didn't? (and this comes from someone who didn't even watched its sequel, "The Wolf of Wall Street" or "Margin Call", not yet)

I expected the most overused clichés from "The Capital", the young ambitious yuppie (Gad El Maleh) riding a fast ascension, his discovery of a world of corruption, lust and greed, ethical dilemmas, probable redemption etc. And the casting of Gad El Maleh didn't comfort my thoughts. Gad (as he's generally called) is one of the most popular comedians in France, but his transition from stage to cinema didn't bring much positive results. His "Chouchou" and "Coco", both cinematic adaptations of popular sketches were critically panned, much more; Gad never really struck as a serious comedian, and was never considered an equal to Jean Dujardin or Vincent Cassel, to give you an idea.

Then I looked at the trailer and was already cringing at his crisped face, he was obviously trying to inhabit the gravity of the subject by playing the tough-guy, and if it doesn't work for Di Caprio, it's even worse for him. The trailer gave away the most archetypal situations, the corrupt bankers, the cynical American, the sexy top-model, the fast-paced editing and the obligatory round trips between Paris, New York, London and Tokyo. I really didn't expect much, and watching the film was almost accidental. The film was a commercial bomb, and even Gad's popularity didn't help, or were people tired of the subject? I guess I wanted to see where I would stand for, and my expectations were so low they could only be positively contradicted.

The first good point relies on the straight-forward narrative, Marc Tourneuil (Gad El Maleh) is not the Boy Scout that would make a perfect puppet for his hierarchy: he understands the malevolent schemes behind his nomination as a CEO of Phenix bank, replacing the former, cancerous President. He knows he has the opportunity of a lifetime to win money and be the master of his own actions. That's a first deviation from the usual 'selling-soul-to-the-devil' plot and it was quite refreshing to see a character who already embraced the cynicism of his environment. The film turns immediately into a chess game involving Tourneuil, the board members, the head of an American hedge fund (Gabriel Byrne), and in a zero-sum game, we expect only one winner.

Indeed, it doesn't take a MBA degree to understand the plot, complex but not contrived. In a nutshell, it's all about finding the tricks to distract the French government from a plan of mass-layoffs in order to increase Phenix' profitability, there are many cases of insider trading, of political maneuvers, fiscal exits and such expectable lines as 'money never sleeps'. The film tries to cover every aspect of finance, succeeding by not making it feel too forced or cliché. However, this owes more to the story than the acting or the script. Gad delivers a fine performance but there are moments where his character didn't exactly know what to do, and I suspect it was the actor lacking the right direction. Gad proved to be an actor of fair capabilities and his performance alternates between some powerful outbursts to awkward lines' deliveries where he's never totally Gordon Gekko, and can't convince as a Buddy Fox.

It's regrettable because Costa-Gavras had the material for a good film, not the most subtle one, but for a gripping thriller and fair entertainment. Yet he polluted it with some unnecessary subplots such as a dull romance with a top model. The film skates over the difficult compatibility between Marc's job and his private life, there are some moments with his wife and his family that could have been fueled with more energy and self-questioning, after all, wouldn't we be interested to see a businessman with a family, for once he's not the lone wolf, young and single. Marc's wife could have added more to the story, allowing her to deviate from "Wall Street" formula but she was too underdeveloped and it's only between Gad and Byrne that the script revealed its few strengths.

Now, I'm more perplexed regarding the fourth-wall breaking moments. It might be a promising concept on the paper to have the protagonist address us, making us wondering if he's really enjoying or disdaining the game he's playing. I think it's up to the actor to make the thing believable or out-of-place, it worked at the ending of "Goodfellas" because Ray Liotta had that liveliness in his eyes, the intensity in the narration that immediately grabbed our attention. Gad talks in a too much laconic voice and really seems like reading lines without believing in them. Anyway, I expected more flamboyance from a modern Robin Hood.

These technical aspects highlight the flaws in the script, that mixed up the words 'insightful' and 'preachy', whether it's to tell us that finance is bad or necessary (or both), we simply wonder if there is something the film shows we didn't already know.

When the CEO of France's Phenix Bank collapses on the golf course, a young bank executive, (Gad Elmaleh) becomes a temporary CEO. He'd like to be permanent, but he realizes right away that there is a very different agenda in play.

An American hedge fund leader, Dittmar Rigule (Gabriel Byrne) is calling the shots and wants Phenix to purchase a worthless Japanese company, for one thing. If he does this, Phenix becomes worthless and the Americans can buy it for next to nothing.

That's just one of his problems. His enemies attempt to distract him using a gorgeous model (Liya Kebede), whom he chases around the world.

Elmaleh plays an antihero who is just as bad as everyone else with his wheeling and dealing, ambition, and disregard for the lives of others. He tells the stockholders that he is like Robin Hood, robbing from the poor to make the rich richer. It's what they all do. It's all a game, he tells someone at the end, and they're all children. They'll have fun until it all goes wrong. Meanwhile he travels, stays in the best places, and cheats on his wife.

I read a few critiques of this, that it's too light and should have been darker. But it's based on "Das Kapital" by Karl Marx and works in Marx's ideas. Some of it seems caricatured and clichéd, but it's really just drawing on an ideology put forth by Marx and Mao Tse Tung.

Like all of these corporation/banking films and documentaries, it's depressing. Last night I saw a film called "Common" where a woman's son is killed. She is getting money, but not in time to bury him, so she tries to borrow it from a bank. She can't. No, she can't, but everyone just piled money on Enron when they had nothing but dummy corporations and no product. Just threw money at them.

I have to think, as Costa-Gravas seems to, that someday this will all go amuck, though in some situations, it already has -- the housing industry, Enron, Bernie Maddock, reported to the SEC countless times, but no one could be bothered to do anything about it -- and on and on. I don't have any answers. Well, I do, actually. The answer is Greed.

A French banker outplays the hedge funds and other crooks at their own games and ends up on top.

Fortunately the film has no heavy left wing message--in fact if it has any message it is that high finance is a game like the video games kids play.

I found it refreshing and different.....The bad guys look too much like bad guys...ruffled hair...ugly expressions ...take of 1 star for that hence a 7 instead of an 8.

The part with the prostitute/model was funny--she got her just do.

RECOMMEND

If there is one message that the movie is trying to communicate to its audience it's the above title.

There are of course reviews that point out the alleged likeliness of this film with movies like "Wall Street" usually concluding "that there is nothing new to see". Under closer examination however, any similarities between the two films go only skin-deep and can only be considered superficial. There are fundamental differences between these two movies because they represent two different approaches and evaluations of the same issue and which one hits home is up for you to decide. And thats because "Wall Street" focuses on the seducing power and aloofness of a loan shark that acts as a money fueled lone wolf, as opposed to the naiveness of a young rookie which is slow to disillusion himself about his own actions while he's getting carried away (but eventually comes out on top etc). The caveat of such scenarios is in that they constantly, silently and almost purposefully marginalize the inherent, all consuming, self-perpetuating environment and ill-conceived culture that money in and all by itself creates, even for "the winners of the game".

La Capital on the other hand has none of the above shortcomings when it comes to describing the black hole lurking deep into the very foundations of our culture: Money. It's a film about attitudes and value systems across the board, with a scenario that's free of cliché good-guy-vs-bad-guy dualities and with the courageous nerve to "pull no punches" sparing its viewer from having to suffer another stereotypical "happy ending" made-in-Hollywood (has elements of it but still its not "right into your face").

Finally, I would just like to add that, all in all, Mr Gavras is right in that there will come a time in the not so distant future ... A time in which, among other things, our western culture will look back to the contemporary intellectuals and artists to examine which ones did of their duty in terms of articulating the public opinion, bringing the spotlight on the machinations of the financial system and the corrosive effects that money in and all by itself has both on our societies as a whole, in our own micro-worlds and those of our acquaintances as well as our own fragile, individual psyches. And when this time comes I think that the memory of both Mr Gavras and those that stood by him in this and similar projects will be, if not exalted, then at the very least spared from the outrage of the dystopian poverty-striken masses.

I guess my expectations with this film were high in terms of getting another glimpse into what really happens in the corporate world. To experience first hand what goes in these top execs ' minds when dealing with high stress situations. ( think of Hank Paulson's character in "too big too fail" as an example or Tim Geithner in the same film, where you could actually feel the world economy tanking due to misuse and abuse of cds - credit default swaps - unless they took corrective action). This film not only is poorly acted, but lacks any remote hint at accurately portraying the actual challenges of a global organization, making up a complex plot involving global executives with the only real goal to showcase the extravagant lifestyle of these executives, flying in private falcon jets to supposedly exotic destinations (if you can call New York, Paris, London, and Miami as "exotic".. come on folks) and resourcing to a cheap affair/obsession between a supposedly world supermodel and the main character. The Director and producers should have a closer look at what the film industry is creating in "real-life-inspired films" which they were trying to emulate in this film, not only finance related but political also (the ides of march, game change), and you can rapidly notice the amount of research and rigor that goes into the intricacies of the plot, which this film totally lacks. Please, don't waste your valuable 120 minutes on this, trust me.

The real problem with these kinds of films... its' as if if all these types of 'situations' just begin to take place in the immediate time-frames. When in reality they would have had to been sorted out a long time before. In addition, this one's a bit to 'dry'... characters to distant.. none to be empathetic with.. overall it all gets very boring.. (and really.. she's their 'super-model'). So who cares... only real problem we must acknowledge.. in today's world, it's more than likely these are the exact same kinds of oligarchs we're having to deal with today.. and that's the truly scary realization. Cold blooded narcissism and greed rules all.. along with callousness to the lives of 'real people.' Do we find our way back, or like this portrayal, are we ultimately lost... when 'it all blows up.'

Very interested 2012 French film by Costa Garvas. Shows how a large French bank operates in the world's financial market and how it integrates into the international banking system. An aging CEO is replaced by a younger executive. He finds himself with a lot of internal and external pressures. Some scenes of it reminds of Wall Street 2. A different approach to the financial market at a fast pace, in some moments too fast to follow and grasp. Also shows the relationships between the different executives and its lower level employees when the new CEO starts laying off people to tune up the finances of the bank with ruthless practices and little concern about employees needs and their respect. Worth while seeing.

What's the difference between American crap and French crap? American crap, like the Wall Street movie, makes some sense. The French crap, the Costa Gavras's Capital, makes absolutely no sense. That movie states that there are only two evils in the world: America and the banks. Regarding America the case is clear. The Gaul's pride, humiliated and still not recovered since WWII, always pushes French movie creators to show the better French people and the superior life in Paris in comparison to New-York. This movie is no different. Full of clichés, it paints Americans as greedy, unscrupulous and dishonest people. And, of course, the bad Americans are planning to cause a new crisis in Europe. The case of banks is more complicated. How the movie paints the banking system? Because of it people lose their jobs, and the rich bankers rob the poor people. And this is the French crap that doesn't make sense. It's absolutely sure that Costa-Gavras, like billions of people around the world, has a check book and a credit card, and at some time in his life took out a mortgage or a private loan. Banks create jobs, not kill them! Banks help to fund businesses, they allow the poor to buy a house with a mortgage, to purchase a car, to finance the kid's education, to get a loan to improve the house. Banks pay interest on the savings. Would Costa-Gavras prefer to keep his money in cash under the pillow? Of course, banks make money, but not many people in the world are ready to work without having some profit. Banks are not the ultimate evil like Costa-Gavras wants to convince us, and capital plays rather positive role in the world affairs. On the artistic side the movie is primitive and absolutely unbelievable. It's a caricature of real life. Dull and unimpressive movie.

Basically good, sympathetic, or at least, interesting characters, you can relate to and care for, encounter obstacles, have to struggle for a while, but ultimately find their way through an unfriendly or simply indifferent world. We all love this type of films. "Capital" is emphatically not one of those, but is nevertheless worthy of attention.

There is at least one character, however, who has not lost her moral compass, and still has some, albeit minuscule weight in the film: the wife of the main protagonist, a former economics professor, and now an ambitious CEO of a leading French bank. Her pull on her husband, however, is only marginally stronger than the one that his extended family, of apparently modest means, has on him. He has feelings for her, as well as for his parents, but those simply cannot compare in intensity to the thrill of money. He is a man who understands "the way the world functions", as he is not shy to explain when questioned. It is a game, in which, typically, rich get richer and poor get poorer, but the reverse is not impossible, as we are told, only improbable. He is cool, calculated, unemotional player, consciously going for high stakes. Just like the others, towards him often inimical characters, who he does not blame for their repugnant behaviour, although certainly would not mind occasionally smashing their heads onto hard surfaces nearby. Of course, we understand that he could not have possible been any different and still belong to the top executive branches of the financial world.

Costa Gavras made his name in the genre of international political thriller, picking his subjects to be the most promising themes for such a film at a given time. It is already telling that he chose the world of high finance, and not of politics, as the most relevant field today. Indeed, the main character is addressed always as "the president", and he is treated as such by everybody he meets. He clearly lives in an entirely different world from the majority of even western, relatively well-off humanity, and his decisions, although made explicitly and exclusively for the benefit of the few, indeed affect, thousands of ordinary mortals. The bank that he directs, and pretty much all the interiors he ever dwells in do not fall far behind many European royal palaces. His world is the world of excess, but in his book it should be unapologetically so.

There is a hint in the film of a possible difference between the old European, and the new aggressive, American business attitudes, that may exist only on the surface. American bankers that we meet maybe cannot pronounce Modigliani's name correctly, but they understand perfectly that their French counterparts are just as greedy, and motivated by the same basic predatory impulses, as they are. As the main character says on one occasion, almost defending his adversaries across the Atlantic: "They are just businessman, like us". The difference seems to be only that the French operate from the high-ceiling, well decorated, old world Parisian buildings, whereas their American partners for their machinations prefer flashy yachts and skyscrapers.

The film certainly lacks the depth and the emotion of the very best Gavras' works, such as "Z" or the "Missing", but it functions well at the level of well written, competently shot, and expertly directed financial drama. It is an insightful, if not too original, commentary on today's state of affairs which to many will ring painfully true. There are also some fairly obvious flaws: the parallel thread with the "super model" that the main hero relentlessly pursues is rather stereotypical, and her attitude towards him appears far-fetched. It would have served the story's development better if the relationship with the multi-dimensional French female employee from London's office was introduced earlier and then further developed. This could have added some intellectual and emotional depth to the main character, beyond what was this way left only sketched. These comments notwithstanding, the film presents an entertaining and informative look at the dynamics of the modern world's new nobility.

The movie, not the book. I had not heard of the filmmaker before this one but some of his films apparently were mainstream in france at some point ? How come ? Still great to find out about it now that I have more time to watch movies, and if I'm going through all of it lately, le Capital is the last one to date. It introduces the corporate banking world from the point of view of a successful corporate clerk climbing the steps quickly, and analysing it quite cynically. There is no romanticism in this history, but rather an analyse through the lens of an antihero. Only one idealist, apparently drawn from the writer of the book who inspired the movie, and they see their hope broken down, and in the the end, there's some bad guys winning. yeah, yeah, I know...

LE CAPITAL, (French) director Costa-Gavras, starring Gad Elmaleh, with Gabriel Byrne. Viewed at the 2013 Los Angeles Film Festival. Costa-Gavras' "Le Capital" is extremely glossy (in the good sense of the word) and an extremely penetrating high-end study of the workings of international Banking Conglomerates, in short, another typical Costa-Gavras exposé of the evils around us that run our lives without our realizing it.

At the beginning of the film the powerful head of a gigantic French investment bank, Le Phenix, collapses on a golf course and is diagnosed with terminal cancer "of the balls" (says the subtitle) --i.e., the testicles. With the implication that financial power mongers have to trade in sexual potency for financial power we have the first hint of the implicit satire to come.

The moribund CEO, passing over old cronies and more obvious candidates for the post he is about to vacate, hand picks a company nobody, a young scholarly banker, Marc Tourneuil, to the position of president thinking he will be easily manipulated during a temporary transition period.

Marc, played forcefully by handsome Moroccan born actor Gad Elmaleh, (Casablanca, 1971) turns out to be nobody's patsy, starts firing people right and left, and is soon running the bank for his own personal gain with the old timers plotting fecklessly against him. He gets involved in a multinational hostile takeover scheme masterminded remotely over office television by a sinister smooth talking Englishman (Gabriel Byrne). On the way in a complex effort to destroy him he is set up with a slinky black supermodel (apparently modeled on obstreperous English supermodel Naomi Campbell) who gives him a hard time in London and Tokyo before he finally has to rape her in a stretch limo in New York to gratify his methodically frustrated lust.

At the very end he finesses all the insiders trying to double cross him by threatening to expose the whole deal which will send them all to jail for insider trading. The deal in question has forced the collapse of Phenix and the creation of a new successor entity. At the foundation board meeting where Tourneuil is of course named the new CEO he announces that as their own "Robin du Bois" (Robin Hood) he will continue to rob the poor so that they can get even richer. Wild cheering goes up all around the table as actor Elmaleh turns to the camera and tells us in the audience directly that this will keep going on as long as we let it go on. Perhaps not the most subtle way to end this awesome tale of financial exploitation and greed at the highest levels, but maybe subtlety is not enough to wake us up.

The real meat of the film is the brilliant way in which Gavras presents the life styles of the super-greedy rich both in the work place and in their social life. For one party scene he apparently rented the entire sculpture foyer of the Louvre, as realistically lavish a party as has ever been seen on screen. All the other scenes follow suite in this typically excellent Costa Gavras mise-en-scene, a visual pleasure all the way and a heady thriller to boot.

"Le Capital" was not a big hit in France when released in November and was met with mixed reviews on IMDb and elsewhere, but since Americans do not have the same expectations as the French "Le capital" may enjoy a better reception here than it had on home ground. Gad Elamleh, for example, is far better known in France as a stand up comedian than a movie actor and his interpretation of banker Marc Tourneuil has been called unrealistic, but to an American audience that has never seen him before he will come across as quite convincing -- a handsome cad you end up rooting for because the other people he is up against are so much more evil and disgusting than he is. If anybody out there thinks that Costa Gavras has "lost it" at age eighty (as some have said) I would say they have another thought coming. In any case, having Consantine Costa Gavras visit the City of Angels to present his latest film was a singular feather in the hat of Film Independent.

"Le Capital" will go on general release in this country in October and then we shall see what people here have to say.

I have seen the posters. Gad Elmaleh and Costa Gavras? Well, Costa Gavras directed nobodies like Ion Caramitru, so why not a stand up comedy man? Than I have read the reviews. The world is not like that, they say.

I have watched the movie. Maybe there are a bit too many characters on screen. I can say that of all of Costa Gavras' movies I have seen so far. But the story is good. And it's the best business-themed movie I have seen.

So what I can tell you is go see the movie and find for yourself if you like it. Just keep in mind this is not a reality TV show about white collar crime. Maybe it's true that the television has a strong impact on the way audiences perceive the big screen stories.

Contact me with Questions, Comments or Suggestions ryitfork @ bitmail.ch

Costa-Gavras has spent his career making movies about political issues: Z (about the assassination of a Greek political activist), The Confession (a show-trial in Czechoslovakia), Missing (the coup in Chile), Music Box (a Nazi fugitive) and now Capital (the whole business world). This one focuses on a young executive's appointment as CEO of a bank and the questionable deals that he starts making. The economic meltdown of 2007-2008 was still fresh in everyone's minds when the movie got released, and we see here the type of world that created it. This collection of cold, amoral - one might say evil - people who put on a facade of carrying out important work are the masters of the world. Much like in "Syriana", the characters are all ruthless individuals; pretty much everyone's a bad guy.

I wouldn't call it Gavras's best movie, but it's an undeniably chilling movie just in seeing the machiavellian goings-on in the business world. Definitely see it.