Also known as: Black Magic (Australian TV title)
Release Date: April 22nd, 2005 (limited)
Directed by: Alex Gibney
Written by: Peter Elkind, Alex Gibney, Bethany McLean
Music by: Matthew Hauser
Cast: Andrew Fastow, Jeffrey Skilling, Kenneth Lay, Gray Davis, Bethany McLean, Peter Coyote (narrator)
Jigsaw Productions, 2929 Productions, HDNet Films, Magnolia Pictures, PBS, 110 Minutes
Review:
Watching this documentary, I couldn’t believe that the Enron shit was over a decade and a half ago. Man, time flies but it was a hell of a story and I’m glad that this was so well presented and thorough, allowing me to revisit the story with even more insight than what was known when the news of this first started breaking.
For those that don’t know about the Enron scandal, how old are you? I kid, geez. Everyone is so sensitive now.
Anyway, this goes through the history of the company, how it was formed, all the big players that helped to turn it into a cabal of vampiric bastards, the relationships of well-known political figures to the company, as well as the fallout of the scandal itself.
A lot of the people interviewed in this documentary were either directly involved in the company or were the people that worked to uncover their shady practices over the years.
Seriously, if you don’t know the story it’s certainly worth learning about. If you do know it, however, there’s still a lot of information to sink your teeth into and there were connections and reveals that either I had forgotten about over the years or I just didn’t know about back in the early ’00s.
Solid, through and through, this is well produced and a pretty enthralling film for those into financial and political scandals.
Rating: 8/10
Pairs well with: other business crime documentaries.
Talking Pulp 