Chasing Madoff

There have been many documentary shows about Madoff. It's a fascinating and horrifying story. But this example resembles a low budget episode of a "crooks and grifters" TV reality show. Obviously, video of Madoffs early career is rare. But the producers fill the void with stock shots, clips from old time movies and inserts that are clearly meant to provide something to watch as the narrator drones on. And to keep things interesting they rely on every cinematic bromide that their computer can manage: inserts with the edges out of focus, sepia toned clips to simulate "vintage" material and flicker-frame montages that repeat the same pointless visuals over and over and over. Its a 40 minute TV show inflated to feature length. Frontline, BBC and others have covered this material better. And the video is well laced with sobbing investors, folks rich enough to interest Madoff with their millions, yet foolish and careless enough to have blindly put all their nest eggs in the same basket. They claim over and over that they have "lost everything" when it is well known that the investors did get a substantial portion of their money back. The Frontline Madoff Affair is a much better watch.

I am obsessed with the Madoff story. Great hearing it from the story of the whistleblower.

My only problem with it is that the writer and protagonist of the story, Markopolos, persistently invents a threat to his life for which others saw no basis, and he constantly paints himself as a non-hero while describing his Herculean efforts.

It is definitely the best indictment of the SEC and shows Markopolis' incredible tenacity, and is a great watch. But the writer can't be the hero off the story and call himself a no -hero. Just let someone else write the script.

I admire Markopols greatly and can't imagine how frustrated he must have been. If there really was some threat to his life, it should have been demonstrated in some way. It just takes away from the story of the Madoff and his victims.

It is a very good documentary. I would have given it a higher score, but there was way too much of the makopolis guy. His personality is like nails on a chalkboard. There was no need to interview his parents. I don't care that he was a good baby, or about any part of his bio/cv. His clear self-absorption and whiny voice assuming Madoff was out to kill him so he was forced to hunker down was ridiculous. The rest of the interviewees were fine, using their experience to tell the story from their perspective. The Madoff saga is a fascinating tale of what happens when rich people try to get richer.

I've watched the De Niro and Dreyfuss movies a couple of times each and like them. As entertainment, Dreyfuss is better, but both are well made films, well directed, well acted. They hit the right notes for movie buffs.

But both of those movies miss the point. The point isn't that Bernie Madoff was a swindler. That's a boring story. Madoff started out selling penny stocks and in the end he was never much more than a penny-stock putz. Sure he may have been chairman of NASDAQ at one point, but if you're under the impression that putzes aren't running the world, well, God bless you.

No the permanently interesting story of the Madoff scandal is the same as the story of the Elizabeth Holmes/Theranos scandal: how they got away with it, how the people who should have known better, didn't, in fact, the folks who should have known better actively enabled the fraudsters. This movie gets that part of the story right: It's a story about the SEC. It should be clear now that the people in Washington and elsewhere who are supposed to be protecting the American people, aren't. They aren't even trying hard. And when they fail, OTHER PEOPLE's lives are destroyed but they keep getting promoted, or they move to even better-paying jobs outside government.

Warning: Watch this film after watching The Big Short and you may be inclined to cash in your retirement funds and put the money into something safe and solid like Bitcoin. (Just kidding.)

I'm not a cynic. This is just how it is, and this movie certainly demonstrates that.

Now about the other aspects of this movie: It should have been a one-hour show. Too much about Markopolos' anxieties about the danger he might be in. I'm willing to say that he was not being unreasonable. But in retrospect, he was NOT killed or assaulted, and that part of the story -- the personal and emotional effect of being a Cassandra -- is real, but can't be appreciated by any of us.

Markopolos is right: He's NOT a hero. He was a Cassandra. And Cassandra wasn't a hero. She was a prophet that no one listened to.

Read the other reviews. There, you will find two schools of thought; those who rate this documentary ***very*** highly and those who rate is ***very*** poorly. What's going on ? This is, I believe, a microcosm of the United States today where simplistic ideology rules Washington. On one hand, you will find those who argue that more regulation is needed and, on the other hand, those who argue that less regulation is the cure because the bureaucrats in Washington are unable to regulate competently. The facts are that if your local firemen are incompetent, the solution is NOT to eliminate fire-fighters, as some right-wingers argue, but to insure that they are competent. The solution is also NOT to increase the number of firemen, as some left-wingers argue. Essentially, this documentary argues not from the viewpoint of Bernie Madoff's evil, but from the viewpoint of the incompetence of Washington bureaucrats. THAT is the truth.