Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005) Reviews

• Fascinating documentary - never a dull moment - too bad the trial results are missing

  lightdee2007-04-25

  A very interesting expose on the greed, hubris, lies, etc. that brought Enron down. This film is well-done and digs up a lot of dirt. The PBS viewing showed a little clip after the film which discussed the strange trial results, which was probably the biggest problem with the film - it pretty much ends with the bankruptcy of enron and doesn't show much about the trials, since they took place later, although they would make for a great inclusion. To me, the most incredible part of the film is that fact that these guys would stand up every day and tell bold-faced lies to the employees, the government, the investors, and make it all sound good. They had to be thinking in the back of their head "it's all going to come crashing down someday"...

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• I hope Ken Lay is somewhere hot

  blanche-22009-12-16

  I agree with previous posts: "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" is right up there with the biggest horror films of our time. And this one is scarier because it's real. It's hard to say what boggles the mind most: the complicity of Arthur Andersen, the banks, and the traders in this elaborate scheme of making a failing company look profitable; the fact that the executives cashed out their stock at high prices and froze the employees' stock accessibility until it was worth nothing; the derisive laughter of the traders over the Enron-caused blackouts in California ("let them fall into the ocean - let them use candles); that Lu Pi, a guy who ran a failing Enron company, left that company with $250 million in his pocket; or the fact that Ken Lay died before they could convict him of anything. Take your pick, it's all disgusting. When one of the California power companies called Enron and said there was a fire in the plant, the trader chuckled and said, "Burn, baby, burn." That sums up Enron's, the banks, the traders', and Arthur Andersen's attitude toward the common man - burn, baby, burn. Let's hope that's what Ken Lay is doing right now. This is a great documentary even if you don't understand business. The only part I didn't quite get were these dummy corporations that Flatow started up to hide Enron's losses which were then invested in by the banks. That was a little complicated, but you'd think someone would have realized that the CFO of Enron running companies that were supposedly selling to Enron was a conflict of interest. Funny, no bank picked it up. They won't give you a mortgage, but they'll pay a fortune to a dummy corporation. Probably my favorite part was the mark to market accounting system employed by Enron and signed off on by Arthur Andersen. I have no understanding of a reliable accounting firm allowing such a thing. In other words, if I have a book proposal, I can report a profit of, say, $30,000 on the book even though it isn't sold and I haven't seen a dime. And one wonders how they cooked their books. With help, that's how.

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• Insightfully informative

  anupam-satyasheel2007-05-17

  Based on and named after the bestseller book Smartest Guys in the Room, this documentary provides an insightful look into the scandalous fall of Enron Corp. There are no actors in this documentary and yet it is dramatic. Such were the factors leading to the 'amazing rise and scandalous fall' of Enron that even a documentary featuring events preceding that historic day in December 2001, when Enron filed for the largest bankruptcy in the corporate US history, seems like a tale of epic imagination. This documentary is neither as detailed nor as insightful as the book, but it does a great job of providing an insightful and reasonably detailed account of the Enron saga. Overall, it is not of any incremental value for the people who have read the book. However, if you can't go through 464 pages, this does a great job of enlightening you on the drama that Enron was.

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• Unfettered Hubris Drives Intriguing Account of Enron Scandal

  EUyeshima2008-04-17

  Even after reading Kurt Eichenwald's "Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story", I was not prepared for the near-Greek tragedy presented in this smartly produced documentary of the Enron scandal based on yet another book by journalists Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind. Directed by Andy Gibney, the 2005 film follows the complicated rise and fall of Enron in an easy-to-follow, chronological order since the mid-1980's, using actor Peter Coyote's lucid voice-over narration. Enron started as a moderate-sized Houston gas-pipeline company that grew exponentially, reaping benefits for shareholders and far more so for the Enron executive team for a long, uninterrupted stretch. Billions of dollars were collected due to speculative mark-to-market accounting techniques approved by the SEC, and Enron consequently became one of the world's largest natural-gas suppliers. What resonates most from this searing film is how circumstantially pathological the chief villains are in this true corporate morality story. While the infamous Ken Lay comes across as the corrupt figurehead we have already come to know through news reports, it's really Enron CFO Andy Fastow (dubbed appropriately "The Sorcerer's Apprentice") and especially President and COO Jeff Skilling, who are mercilessly exposed here. Skilling is portrayed as a brilliant leader and a corporate Darwinist, whose favorite book is Richard Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene", which he apparently translated into a bloodless performance review policy that worked like a genetic algorithm for people. Employees were rated on a 1-5 scale based on the amount of money one made for the company. Skilling mandated that between 10-15% of employees had to be rated as 5's (worst). And to get a rating of 5 meant that one was immediately fired. This review process was dubbed "rank and yank". Such was a typical example of his survivalist thinking. The corruption spread throughout the company, as Enron was responsible for, among other things, gaming the Northern California "rolling blackouts" in 2001, whereby the company profited as huge parts of the state were plunged into darkness. Citizens were threatened by a deregulation plan that essentially enabled a number of immoral Enron traders (led by Tim Belden) to place calls that drove up energy-market prices and took advantage of power-plant shutdowns. Of course, the Bush family dynasty does not come across unscathed in the Enron story and justifiably so according to their inextricable ties to Lay. Gibney effectively uses video footage from testimony at congressional hearings, as well as interviews with disillusioned former employees such as Mike Muckleroy and whistle-blower Sherron Watkins (who uses some effective pop culture references like "Body Heat" and Jonestown to get her points across). There are some amusing vignettes and images that tie some of the disparate elements together with excessive glibness. The documentary is best when it sticks to the facts, for this is one inarguable case where fact is truly stranger than fiction. Extras are plentiful on the 2006 DVD. Gibney provides an informative albeit verbose commentary track, and four deleted scenes, about twenty minutes in total, are included that become redundant with the film's portrayal of corporate malfeasance. There is also a fourteen-minute making-of featurette, as well as a "Where Are They Now?" snippet on the principals and three separate conversations with McLean and Elkind on how they got the story, how they validated their findings, and their enthusiastic reaction to the film. Other bonus materials include Gibney reading from scripts of skits performed at Enron and a Firesign Theater sketch about Enron's demise, as well as Fortune Magazine articles written by McLean and Elkind and a gallery of editorial cartoons.

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• It's worth your time if you're a horror fan. It's as frightening as anything you've seen.

  doctorsmoothlove2008-05-19

  The collapse of the Enron Corporation is fascinating to anyone with even rudimentary understanding of the economic practices of American corporations. It isn't surprising that several books describing the collapse are available. However, what is surprising is that a film would be adapted from one of said books. Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room takes a different approach to the documentary genre, as most documentaries are independent of a literary source or spawn one of their own. I'm not inclined to say this is the reason the film is not only entertaining and informative even to those who lack knowledge of business practices, but it probably does contribute to its effectiveness. It may be difficult for non-American viewers to completely understand, but the psychological appeal is evident. I had to watch this film for my Business Ethics course in University. The film describes the formation of Enron under the leadership of the ignominious Ken Lay. Jeffrey Fastow is Ken's disciple and he hires one of his own. He is graduate student, Andrew Fastow, who helps him facilitate Enron's practice of hiding debt in smaller companies. Fastow later becomes CEO of the company. The film also mentions the Lu Pei interlude, which resulted in 250 million dollars exiting the company for Pei's private consumption. The film also describes Kenneth Lay's position as CEO until his resignation in 2002. In addition, the film describes Enron's "power play" to manipulate electrical energy prices in California, Enron's relationship with the Bush family, Enron's fixation with imaginary profits, Enron's relationship with Arthur Anderson ,and Enron's "rank n' yank" system of eliminating "bad" employees. If what I've described sounds like an overview of a non-documentary film, then I've communicated effectively. With only narration, interviews, and commentary, Peter Coyote and Alex Gibney create a documentary which transcends its genre into a legal thriller of comparison to Michael Clayton. While such a comparison may seem unjust, and it probably is, this film's source material allows it to unfold unlike most documentaries. Skilling's fixation with Enron's continued success, embodied with his declaration "I am Enron", to Lu Pei's swindling of corporate money, and the brutal end create a documentary with a distinctive narrative structure. The film even displays conclusion by stating the end to its villain-protagonists and the harm that they caused to their underlings. Additionally, the film provides analysis of Enron's policies through consultation of business associates of Enron. It deftly compares the ability of Lay and the others to swindle such large amounts of money to Milgram's experiment on the limit of human obedience. The effect all this has is to show the ability of the human mind to find loopholes in the most sophisticated of systems. It also deeply bothers the audience, at least it did me. Any thought a viewer has of the virtues of corporate America will vanish after watching this film. Furthermore, when the film describes Enron's role in the end of Gray Davis' governorship and the Bush family's role in deregulating the business environment, it does so without appearing derogatory. Few documentaries are as adroitly crafted as this one is. Through interviews, TV clips, and narration, Gibney has created an imaginative and compelling documentary. At times I felt as if this film wasn't the documentary it claims to be. It never lets you rest as it gives example after example of the infinity of corruption. Maybe by watching it, you'll be one of the smartest guys in the room. Lay, Skilling, Pei, and Fastow would have no problem acing an ethics course or at least getting a good grade.

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