Chasing Madoff Blu-ray Review
Waters down the Madoff scandal with gumshoe nonsense.
Reviewed by Casey Broadwater, April 23, 2012
Robbing Peter to pay Paul, financial advisor Bernie Madoff perpetrated one of the largest financial frauds in world history, a hedge fund Ponzi scheme
that took investors for an estimated $65
billion dollars. Madoff was arrested in 2008 when the whole charade finally collapsed--as Ponzi
schemes inevitably do--but the scandal only increased in scope when it was revealed that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission had turned a
blind eye to Madoff's activities even after being given ample evidence of fraud. The scheme sent up more red flags than a Chinese embassy, and the
most glaringly obvious was that Madoff's reported returns never wavered, climbing at a near-perfect forty-five degree angle even as the economy
dipped up and down. Independent investigator Harry Markopolos called it "the equivalent of a Major League Baseball player batting .966 and no one
suspecting a cheat."
If there's a single protagonist in the effort to expose Madoff for the sham that he was, it's Markopolos, a tall, disheveled-looking former securities
industry exec who breathlessly blew his whistle for nearly a decade before authorities and the press started to pay attention. In 2010 he published a
memoir,
No One Would Listen: A True Financial Thriller, and this forms the basis for
Chasing Madoff, a new documentary by Jeff
Prosserman that charts the paper trail-chasing and paranoia of Markopolos' nine-year crusade. Sounds fascinating, right? Unfortunately, the film is told
in an over-fluffed docu-drama style that focuses so intently on Markopolos' concerns over his own safety--ultimately
unfounded concerns--that
it misses the real story.
In 1999, Markopolos--then Chief Investment Officer for Rampart Investment Management--was asked by his firm to develop a financial product that
could compete with a mysterious hedge fund manager who was returning consistent 1-2 percent profits months after month. French aristocrat and
money manager Thierry de la Villehuchet tipped off Rampart that Bernie Madoff was running the fund, and when Markopolos got ahold of Madoff's
records, it took him only five minutes to realize something was awry. Within a few hours, he had determined that Madoff's numbers
had to be
the product of an epic Ponzi scheme, where money is continuously swindled out of new victims and used to pay the returns of previous investors. It's
like the set of an old Hollywood western--the storefronts may look convincing, but they're just propped up plywood with nothing behind them. There
was nothing "real" about the investments Madoff was offering; he was basically faking trade tickets and tricking his clients all the way down the line.
With the help of co-workers Frank Casey and Neil Chelo--along with journalist Michael Ocrant--Markopolos began building an obsessively documented
case against Madoff. But no one wanted to hear to his findings. When he presented a 12-page article to Forbes, they squashed the story. The Wall
Street Journal buried it too. More concerning, when Markopolos presented the S.E.C. with 29 red flags, the agency sat back and twiddled their thumbs.
Either Madoff had friends in high places, or he was skilled at exploiting bureaucratic oversight and incompetence. As it turns out, it was more than a
little of both.
Frustratingly,
Chasing Madoff gives little insight into the large-scale grifter's personality, motivations, or even his methods. He remains a kind
of evil enigma, a financial boogeyman, and we're left to speculate on how and why he could knowingly ruin the lives of his thousands of investors. (A
few of whom are interviewed here, mostly in tears.) To be fair, director Jeff Prosserman didn't have much to work with on the Bernie front. Madoff,
currently serving a 150-year sentence, has been mostly mum about his crime, and he only appears in the film via a few archival audio recordings and
television appearances. He's simply not the focus of the documentary.
Instead, Prosserman devotes most of the film to Markopolos, an increasingly kooky and possibly delusional figure who clearly wants to be the star of his
own "true financial thriller." Don't get me wrong; Markopolos' tireless efforts to bring down Madoff undoubtedly qualify him for real-life hero status. The
thing is, he seems a little
too into himself and his story, hyping up the hypothetical danger that allegedly surrounded him at every turn. In
noir-ish black and white reenactments, Prosserman casts Markopolos as some sort of Wall Street gumshoe, a number-crunching P.I. in
way
over his head. We see Markopolos checking under his family minivan for bombs, target shooting down at a firing range, and getting fitted for a
bulletproof vest. In one of the more ridiculous scenes, we watch him cock a pump-action shotgun, readying himself in case the S.E.C. decides to raid
his home in the middle of the night to steal his files. No concrete evidence is given that Markopolos was ever in real danger, but Prosserman
melodramatically plays up the threat nonetheless, showing us stills from 1930s gangland slayings and playing clips from old mobster movies. At one
point, he insinuates that there were gunshots at Markopolos' home, and for a second we think
good lord, they killed his wife! It's a cop-out
misdirect, of course; Prosserman's just showing us what
could've happened.
All of this feels cheap and needlessly theatrical and amateurish. Worse, it distracts from the real questions at hand. What actually happened inside the
S.E.C.? How were they able to sweep Markopolos' allegations under the rug for nine years? Why have there been so few arrests in the wake of the
scandal? What's being done to keep frauds like this from happening again? We don't much insight into the issues that matters most. In trying much
too hard to play up the "thriller" aspects of the story--that were never really there to begin with--Prosserman overlooks how compelling and
devastating
the Madoff case is on its own.
Chasing Madoff Blu-ray, Video Quality
Chasing Madoff was shot primarily on high definition digital video, with additional stock footage--much of it in standard definition--drawn from a
variety of sources, from 1930s gangster films to contemporary news broadcasts. On Blu-ray, the 1080p/AVC encode looks true-to-source and often
impressive. The interview sequences are very striking, visually, with the subjects dramatically lit and placed in front of ink-black backgrounds. Here, the
level of clarity is at its best, with fine facial and clothing detail that's easily visible, even at a distance. The overly histrionic reenactments featuring
Markopolos aren't quite as sharp, but still reveal plenty of high definition texture. The black and white sequences are stark and noir-ish and appropriately
shadowy, while those shot in color have a more realistic, documentarian style, with a picture that's never especially punchy but has good saturation and
natural skin tones. Obviously, not a lot can be done about the standard definition footage, which is what is is. The encode itself is stable and mostly free
of compression issues, though you will notice periodic aliasing and shimmer and source noise. Nothing particularly distracting, though.
Chasing Madoff Blu-ray, Audio Quality
I don't normally expect documentaries to feature carefully engineered sound design, so I had practically written the audio portion of this review in my
mind before I even popped in the disc--
quiet, lots of talking heads, not much surround channel usage. I was pleasantly surprised, then, by the
lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track featured here, a potent mix that makes full use of its multi-channel encode. As I mentioned above, the
documentary has a tendency to be extremely dramatic, and this goes for the sound effects and music too. From traffic noise and general city ambience
to gun shots and impressionistic swooshes, the rear-channels come to life often and effectively with directional sounds. The sometimes overly emphatic
music--by David Fluery--is punchy and anchored with plenty of bass. There are lots of talking heads, yes, but the vocal recording are cleanly recorded,
well integrated into the mix, and easily understood. For those that need or want them, the disc comes with optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles.
