Madoff: El monstruo de Wall Street

Fantastic true crime documentary directed by joe berlinger, and coming to be one of the finest products on how to get an insight into the bernhard madoff ponzi scheme case, made possible through dilligent reasearch and a very well made dramatization by his production crew... a product thats quite on the brink of overwhelmingness to binge for breakfast...and just another star on my chart for being concerned about how economics really works when the road is cleared for any obstacles and monitoring, and crimes like this could happen... and does happen... and will happen in the years to come.

So whenever a ponzi scheme is mentioned and youve forgotten what that is, then ''madoff: the monster on wall street'' will stay there to explain to you...

What is not excellent and what was used to really sell this documentary as new info, is the salacious and absolutely unproven allegation that Madoff was using organized crime and drug cartel money. The only evidence of this they offer is that Madoff parked money in the Cayman Islands, which even the documentary admitted, so do millions of legitimate investors. The evidence against him using funds from criminal enterprises, however, is overwhelming and ignored. If he were using such funds he would never have had the cash shortfalls he experienced. OG and drug cartel monies are not subject to the vagaries of the markets. Hence, when the market crash came in 2008, Bernie would have been sitting pretty with his OC money. Lastly, if Madoff had been fronting OC money and that yappy dog, Harry Markopolos, was threatening to expose and end the scheme, he would have woken up dead!

Otherwise, it was an excellent retelling of the Madoff tale and underscores how good and accurate the Robert De Niro/ Michelle Pfeiffer 'Wizard of Lies' was.

For anybody who just heard faint echoes about the "Madoff monster" this documentary provides a good insight into his crimes. However, starting with weak points first, it suffers from a severe case of Netflexite, aka that annoying device of starting somewhere mid-point of a story and working its way back and forward quite randomly.

Second, we never get any info about what happened to the Security & Exchange Commission's inspectors who "failed" to inspect or to the SEC at large, the "commission" that showed only gross incompetence or even collusion with the monster.

The story starts with Madoff arrest on 11 Dec. 2008, the terrible year of the great crisis and works its way back to Madoff's birth, youth, marriage to Ruth and origins of his firm, with excruciatingly boring details. There are many interviews with employees from the legit Madoff operations and none from the illegal - no surprise there.

There are also many re-enactment, of which at least half is superfluous. In short, Madoff run his illegal scheme from the 17th floor of the Lipstick building and the legal from the 19th. Employees from the 19th were forbidden entrance to the 17th and even Mark and Andrew, Bernie's son were not allowed. But even if this would be considered at least bizarre and worth exploring, nobody did anything for decades.

Some external connections started sniffing around Madoff as far back as 1992, when his name was mentioned to the SEC. Since then, there were six investigations on Madoff, all botched.

At this stage I would have like to watch a documentary about SEC and what happened to those "inspectors" - I guess nothing, but still...

Four episodes about this complex yet easy fraud are long to digest and the tragic ending comes none too soon, with Mark committing suicide, Andrew dying of cancer, Ruth being destitute and Bernie dying in the slammer, also none too soon. A tighter editing and less flourishing would have helped.

Featuring slow-motion actor re-enactments, the New York Stock Exchange-style display graphics scrolling along the bottom of the screen, and obligatory views of hysterical brokers on the trading floor, it's all really interesting. But I believe that I've had enough of being entertained by the real atrocities of unrepentant guys. At least Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street offers the victims of white collar crimes whose stories are frequently ignored a voice. This series shed light on atrocities that take place in Wall Street and how it is constantly ignored even though multiple red flags. Pity all the victims involved.

A very interesting documentary on a topic that I think is good to know for most people. But, in typical Netflix fashion, is dragged out over way too many episodes and cost you way too much of your time.

The lack of original footage has been made up by some acting, but all scenes seem endlessly repeated. Good they interviewed a lot of involved people and they got a hand on some original content though. But it feels like it could fit in a 1 hour documentary movie. So yes this is a great topic, but I'd rather advice to read a news article on it than to spend your hours of precious time on Netflix.