Michael Burry (Christian Bale)

The Big Short may contain a serious dose of comedy, but the issue it centers on is far from funny.

This movie talks about an economic crisis that many people have started to forget: The 2007 US financial catastrophe that left millions of Americans homeless, jobless and without their retirement funds.

Written and directed by Adam McKay, the film is based on the New York Times'€™ non-fiction best-seller The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by finance journalist Michael Lewis. It tells the story of four characters who are based on real-life men who manage to predict the financial crisis long before it happens.

The story begins in 2005 when Scion Capital founder Michael Burry (Christian Bale) digs deep into high-rated mortgage bonds and finds that these financial instruments are full of bad home loans.

The heavy-metal music lover who wears the same T-shirt for days and is often seen barefoot around his office predicts that the bad loans will be in default in the next few years and decides to '€œshort'€ or bet against the popular housing market.

Back then, mortgage bonds were believed to be the bedrock of the economy. Despite strong objection from his investors, Burry invests in a new financial instrument that is specially tailored for him.

Elsewhere, ambitious and stylish Wall Street banker Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling) hears about Burry'€™s big investment and sees the big opportunity as well.

The outspoken and bad tempered money manager Mark Baum (Steve Carell) accidentally gets a tip off on the news and meets with Vennett, who attracts his attention after giving a presentation on how the subprime housing market would soon crumble.

Curious, Baum and his team of dedicated analysts (Jeremy Strong, Hamish Linklater and Rafe Spall) go to the field to investigate bad loans in some housing complexes. They visit newly built houses that are abandoned and talk to two mortgage brokers who ignore the financial background of their home buyers and seem to target everybody '€œwith credit cards and heart pulses'€.

Vennett'€™s information also reaches two young enthusiastic money managers Jamie Shipley (Finn Wittrock) and Charlie Geller (John Magaro) through word of mouth. The two ask ex-senior banker Ben Rickert (Brad Pitt) to use his connections to help them make bigger money.

While finance lingo such as '€œsubprime'€, '€œshort'€, '€œcredit default swap'€ and '€œCDO'€ (collateralized debt obligation) can be hard to comprehend for general audiences, director Adam McKay, who is behind Anchorman, has a simple way of making the terms more digestible. He breaks the fourth wall, with celebrities like chef Anthony Bourdain and singer Selena Gomez facing the camera and explaining the terms clearly.

The same move is also used to emphasize the existence of some real-life events with a few of the characters getting out of their acting zone to talk to the audience, including Gosling who narrates the story.

McKay'€™s strategy may be unusual, but the explanations of financial terms used in the movie help the audience to enjoy the characters without feeling baffled by alien terminology.

Go big or go home: Jamie Shipley, played by Finn Wittrock (right), and Charlie Geller, played by John Magaro, talk about their investment in the movie The Big Short.

Throughout the movie, Carell plays a big role in building up the emotion. Through his angry character and rapid fire way of talking, he intensely peels open the inconvenient truth of the financial industry layer by layer. He also delivers a complexity and conflict within his character very well.

Unlike Carell, who meets various people in a number of sets, Bale character is rarely seen outside his office. He strongly portrays his character'€™s difficulty in interacting with people, frustration and arduous work '€” all wrapped in his eccentric style, short dialogues and fast drum beats.

The Big Short is not only a film that assembles some A-list Hollywood actors. It is also among the few films to secure permission to feature Led Zeppelin'€™s '€œWhen the Levee Breaks'€, heard in the trailer and at the end of the movie.

This is a movie that badly wants to get engaged with the audience, and nails it.

'€” Photos courtesy of Paramount Pictures and Regency Enterprises