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Comwayon A Disappointing Continuation

Billie Morin This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Delight Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

pittsley I thought this was a well-performed documentary. I took a different view of it altogether. I believe that Enron is a small microcosm of the Conservative ideology. The greed, the flagrant disregard for innocent people and the manipulation of politics, economic policies to profiteer are all staple traits of Conservatives around the world. These people were not necessarily the smartest people in the room. They had no morals values, or considered ethics in any decisions made. Anyone can profit if you have no conscious.If Enron's practices and policies, corporate/ environmental deregulation (conservative values) were applied to global economics, we would all see the global economy crumble much the same, and the wealthy profit, while the working class pay the price and the poor become poorer.They showcased their new company motto, not as the world natural gas leader, but as the World Leading company. It appears they believed they were writing new economics and capitalism and proving to the world that their ideology was the right way.A great example of conservative policies/ ideologies negatively impacting the world and leaving a catastrophic mess for others to clean up and fix.

Desertman84 Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room is a documentary based on the best- selling book of the same title by Fortune reporters Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind.It is a study of one of the largest business scandals in American history. McLean and Elkind are credited as writers of the film alongside the director, Alex Gibney.The documentary examines the collapse of the Enron Corporation, which resulted in criminal trials for several of the company's top executives; it also shows the involvement of the Enron traders in the California electricity crisis. The film features interviews with McLean and Elkind, as well as former Enron executives and employees, stock analysts, reporters and the former Governor of California Gray Davis.The documentary opens with a reenactment of the suicide of Enron executive Cliff Baxter, then travels back in time, describing Enron chairman Kenneth Lay's humble beginnings as the son of a preacher, his ascent in the corporate world as an "apostle of deregulation," his fortuitous friendship with the Bush family, and the development of his business strategies in natural gas futures. It points out that the culture of financial malfeasance at Enron was evident as far back as 1987, when Lay apparently encouraged the outrageous risk taking and profit skimming of two oil traders in Enron's Valhalla office because they were bringing a lot of money into the company. But it wasn't until eventual CEO Jeff Skilling arrived at Enron that the company's "aggressive accounting" philosophy truly took hold. The Smartest Guys in the Room explores the lengths to which the company went in order to appear incredibly profitable. Their win-at-all-costs strategy included suborning financial analysts with huge contracts for their firms, hiding debts by essentially having the company loan money to itself, and using California's deregulation of the electricity market to manipulate the state's energy supply. Gibney's film reveals how Lay, Skilling, and other execs managed to keep their riches, while thousands of lower-level employees saw their loyalty repaid with the loss of their jobs and their retirement funds. This is a meticulously researched and ably handled chronicle of one of the largest corporate scandals in American history.Also,it is a deft, entertaining and infuriating documentary about one of the most egregious cases of corporate corruption in American history that one does not require an interest in business affairs to fully appreciate it.Finally,it one will surely get mad when he watches it.

Dylan Brown I'll be the first to say, that I'm not totally clued up on the world of business, especially in terms of utilities and power, but I have to say that this film is a highly informative and hard hitting film that anyone, no matter what their interest, should find highly compelling.At it's heart, it exploits the downfalls and pitfalls of the Enron Corporation - arguably the most catastrophic bankruptcy in the history of the united states, with the redundancies of tens of thousands of employees worldwide, the crashing of stock (which it should be added staff heavily invested their own personal funds and pensions in), but not all before the MD's had all cashed in at it's amazingly high price.It contains past-employees accounts of the way the corporation was run, their opinions on Jeff Skilling and the fact that, at the hear of it, several senior figures within the company knew of it's downfalls. It makes for very compelling viewing at this 'highly stylised', which was nothing more than a very, very large pyramid scheme.At the start, I probably would've given this title a miss, but honestly, just watch a few minutes and I'm sure you'll be lured in - it makes for very interesting viewing.

evening1 Does "The Smartest Guys in the Room" require the smartest theater-goers in the world to understand it? Not exactly, but close. I pay attention to the news but I never really grasped what Enron was all about. I hoped this documentary would straighten me out on "the corporate crime of the century." I now feel I get the basics of what happened in a scary story about rapacious manipulation and greed. But there's a lot that didn't become crystal clear.I taped this movie on CNBC, and it was a good thing. Over a few days I was able to rewind repeatedly as I tried to put together for myself what had really occurred. (I'm trying to become more financially literate in general so this wasn't easy for me.) The main format for this movie is talking heads with, predominantly in the first half of the film, some thematically related songs woven in for atmosphere and lightening. I could have used a little more explanation along the way to understand better what happened in the course of wrongdoings large and small, from the Nigerian barge deal to the California electricity scam. Still, I'm able to walk away with significant illumination. The movie definitely has its strong points. I'd remembered company whistle-blower Sherron Watkins from the news, and she's just as impressive here. When company villain Jeffrey Skilling resigns a year and a half before Enron collapses, right around the time of 9-11, "this was Jim Jones feeding us the Kool-aid and not drinking it himself," she says. The small-print follow-ups at the end, citing Skilling and Fastow's incarcerations and Lay's death, amount to a happy ending. But as Ms. Watkins reminds us: "It's all about the rationalization that you're not doing anything wrong. And it can happen again."