Film: Freefall (2009)

Freefall is a feature-length made-for-television film that was aired on BBC 2 last month.  It was written and directed by Dominic Savage and it was meant to be a gritty and explosive drama set around the financial crisis but does it work?

Aidan Gillen, Rosamund Pike, Joseph Mawles, Anna Maxwell-Martin and Dominic Cooper [Image source]

I was quite excited about this show as I had just discovered the gorgeous Aidan Gillen and the cast looked really good. 

Aidan Gillen plays ruthless banker Gus whose entire life centres around his job.  He is ably supported by Rosamund Pike and Riz Ahmed.

Dominic Cooper and Sarah Harding

Dominic Cooper plays morally bankrupt mortgage advisor Dave Matthews who will tell his clients anything to make a sale, except what they really need to know.  He sells a discounted mortgage to his old school friend Jim Potter (played by Joseph Mawles) and a year later things begin to fall apart.

Joseph Mawles

Each of the actors gave great performances and there is certainly a lot of eye candy in the film.

The problem is that it is never really explained how the antics of the bankers filtered down into the real world and precisely how shady and incompetent were the deals that they made.  By not going into any detail about what exactly they did but by throwing in a load of financial jargon, it kind of leads to the question as to why the traders were in the film at all?  Especially as Savage portrayed them in quite a sensitive manner and did not resort to portraying them as the coked up, greedy megalomaniacs that stereotypes have come to suggest.

Apart from kind of wondering where the story with Gus was going and what the significance was to the story of the mortgage advisor and his victims, the rest of the story was written quite well.  The problem though was that this was an almost insufferably bleak film and everyone is a loser in the end.  I was left wondering why I had just spent 90 minutes of my life being made to feel miserable.

As much as I want to rate this film highly because of the fine performances, I can’t.  In the absence of a script that at least answers some of the questions we have regarding the current financial crisis, you might as well read the newspapers.  They may well be less bleak and depressing.

I give it 2.5 out of 5 stars.