Making a complex subject entertaining

THE Big Short takes a seriously complex real-world subject and turns it into an Economics 101 session by using humour and other novel means to depict in layman's terms how a few well-placed number crunchers, realising that the US housing market was supported by bad loans, predicted an inevitable meltdown and made a fortune by betting against the market.

Making light of a global financial crisis in which thousands of people lost their homes, jobs and life savings is a risky business but director Adam McKay, who also wrote the script with Charles Randolph, forgoes the conventional approach for something completely different. We get an entertaining movie in return.

In September 2008, US investment bank Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, becoming merely the most prominent victim of a crisis triggered by the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market, when borrowers defaulted on their housing loans in droves. The Big Short depicts the events that led to that moment by following several characters who were caught up - in one way or another - in the financial storm.