Dumb Money – Film Review
by Brian Merriman

Director – Craig Gillespie
Writers – Lauren Schuker Blum, Rebecca Angelo, Ben Mezrich
Stars – Paul Dano, Pete Davidson, Vincent D’Onofrio

To make a good film, you need a great story. The Antisocial Network by Ben Mezrich provides exactly that. When something happens in real life, it can make a great film.

Black Bear (UK/USA) productions found this great story, and the right resources and have turned out a cinematic debut of considerable merit. The writing captures and relates this layered ‘Wall Street’ plot so well.

The ‘little guy’ (a nicely underplayed Paul Dano, in a skilful performance as ‘Keith Gill’), with a talented cast of individual investors aka ‘dumb money’ who must stick together to rock the avarice elite.

Dano plays a likeable, sincere and underestimated, unlikely leader whose openness, inspires trust amongst so many small investors/risk takers, that he becomes a serious player in the battle for who can benefit from online investment.

There are so many characters on the screen, but Craig Gillespie’s smooth direction makes it possible to stick with all of them. They are all important, well sketched and well played. They all play a role in setting out a thrilling plot full of some dramatic tension, of a David and Goliath kind.

Set in lockdown, it is also an interesting commentary as to how the Internet really grabbed hold of people’s attention when it replaced live social interaction. It all comes down to trust in the end and when gambling on the stock market, who can you trust?

There are some good comedy moments in Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo’s flowing script, but it is such a serious subject and they handle the drama of that well too.

How the super wealthy have no social compass or compassion is an ever-present underscore, as we switch from the hard toil of earning a living by nurses, students, and shop assistants, all in debt, to the plush billionaire lifestyle of those who only have to place a phone call, to earn what others will take a lifetime to try to achieve.

‘Dumb Money’ is all about more and more. It’s a revealing insight into current ‘values’ of money and success, versus money and survival. The final sequence of actual testimony neatly wraps up the plot.

The fact that it is made by a joint UK company, surely with lots of similar activities on its own doorstep to harvest, makes it a very interesting social commentary on risk, finance and the isolation of lockdown.

For a movie with ‘dumb’ in the title, it is really quite clever and entertaining, and it packs a punch.