American Casino
To help people understand the economic collapse of 2008, Andrew and Leslie Cockburn interview experts in the financial field and show the personal cost of Wall Street's shortsighted policies on homeowners.
Directed by Leslie Cockburn
(Not Rated)
***
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
A documentary traces the economic collapse of 2008.
American Casino is a “gamble that simply doesn’t pay off,” said David Fear in Time Out New York. In an attempt to help the American people understand the economic collapse of 2008, husband-and-wife team Andrew and Leslie Cockburn connect the dots leading up to it. The film begins on Wall Street, where an indecipherable “parade of talking heads, speaking advanced business-ese,” explains how deregulated markets led to unprecedented debts. American Casino paints a “damning portrait of the financial industry,” said Ronnie Scheib in Variety, even if the experts are “hardly geniuses” at explaining the crisis. When the Cockburns turn the camera on minority homeowners in Baltimore and on California officials left to deal with decaying foreclosed homes, they humanize the “destabilization and personal cost” of shortsighted policies. The film succeeds less at tracing the collapse’s causes than at capturing an important chapter in the American experience, said Andrew O’Hehir in Salon.com. It is an “intimate, terrifying document that renders an incomprehensible slice of recent history in human terms.”
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
-
What would it be like in jail for Trump if he's convicted?
Today's Big Question The Secret Service has begun grappling with how to protect a former president behind bars
By Rafi Schwartz, The Week US Published
-
How much can you save shopping secondhand?
The Explainer Many Americans are buying pre-owned items to counteract the effects of inflation
By Becca Stanek, The Week US Published
-
Downtown St. Louis is in a real estate 'doom loop'
Under the Radar The city is ripe with abandoned buildings and vacant lots, with its real estate market in dire straits
By Justin Klawans, The Week US Published