Chasing Madoff

Never have I seen a film misdirected so well. Director Jeff Prosserman's comedy staring buffoon Harry Markopolos draws influence from Tommy Wiseau's THE ROOM. Why was Prosserman's vision not assessed by functioning adults? This film is indicative of everything wrong in documentary filmmaking today. Personally I was sad to have witnessed such a cinematic holocaust. Don't waste your time! Prosserman clearly has no idea what he's doing. If you look at Prosserman's previous work you'll find similar reviews. Emblematic of Canadian cinema, Chasing Madoff fails to meet the sufficient requirements to entertain an audience. If you're into watching films where the director has no clue where he is, what's going on or what he's doing, this film is right up your alley.

The basic story was ripe for an excellent documentary. It was about how a small group of people tried warning others about Madoff. They failed, but not for lack of trying, and good for them for trying.

However, the documentary itself is far too dramatic. After awhile it was tiring to hear the small group tout itself as being extraordinarily brave. The main guy who stuck with it ended up looking as disturbed as Madoff--living in a paranoid fantasy world where his family was in constant danger.

It runs about an hour and a half. It would have been a very good 50-minute documentary. But it drags on and on, often not getting anywhere.

Too bad. It had a real story to tell.

Also missing is any investigative reporting, after the fact, about why the people who were alerted (looking at you SEC, Wall Street Journal) didn't act? We still don't know why from this documentary.

This documentary explores very interesting aspects of what went on behind the curtains while the massive Bernie Madoff's scheme developed, expanded and ultimately collapsed.

However, the documentary wastes the potential by using a very weak and wacky personal storyline anchor, which becomes repetitive and ultimately annoying after one of the main subjects starts putting out his paranoia for the n-th time.

The end result is a clumsy piece that bumps from a few high moment between a repetitive cycle of self-pity, delusion and confused thoughts of a man that slide into it after not seeing any results from his push to expose a major fraud in the making.

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.

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.