Review by Pamela Zoslov
The complexities of high finance generally do not make for compelling cinema. That may be why we haven't seen, for instance, The Ivan Boesky Story or The Trials of Bernie Madoff. The subject may just be too complicated for the relatively simple film medium. I wondered, then, about the title of Nicholas Jarecki's ARBITRAGE which suggests a drama about risk arbitrage, the 1980s insider-trading scheme, symbolized by the swashbuckling Boesky, in which traders would buy stock in a company likely to be acquired in a merger and simultaneously sell stock in its potential acquirer.
The title, it turns out, is misleading. There is arbitrage in ARBITRAGE , but it's the less sexy kind involving commodities futures. And, it is but a small detail in a glossy morality play about a rich man who thinks he can buy and sell people.
