Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005)

I'm surprised by the how often this movie is recommended on forums I frequent online, and the corresponding glowing Rotten Tomatoes reviews. I found the storytelling to be inconsistently paced, and there was nearly no depth to the description of actually how the fraud was perpetrated. The tie-in to California was interesting and I appreciated all of the primary content they were able to use -- company videos, recordings, etc. Still, I don't think I'd recommend this to a modern viewer.

From the start the documentary makes it clear that it's a hit-piece. It has a clear agenda it's pushing and the film makers don't hold back on telling the public that, yes, Enron was evil. However, honestly, despite that it was pretty fair. It actually made more of a point to detail how Enron got to the place that brought convictions rather than doing a straight hit-piece on the corporation. In other words, there is really a lot of meat on the bone here and it does a decent job of detailing the evolution of the company and why it turned out the way it did, rather than just focusing on the political mess that it created as one would have expected on a film covering this topic, and one with a fairly snarky title at that. There is a lot to learn from watching this, particularly because the scandal that engulfed the company was NOT the primary focus, but rather how it came to the scandal. And that, I really believe, is what the film should be about. It had a story to tell and it told it well, surprisingly well for a film that promised to be a hit-piece. We actually need more things like this. It was refreshing that it covered the circumstances and, most importantly, the hows rather than focusing on the results of Enrons actions. Illuminating would be the best phrase to use.