"Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" is a very smart documentary that deserves to be watched again, ten years later, as the U.S. still deals with economic problems caused by Wall Street bad behavior.Alex Gibney is at the top of his game in this film, capturing the story of a company that captivated the stock market through lies and deceit before collapsing in an amazing implosion.Gibney shows how Jeffrey Skilling, the head of Enron, created a culture that misled investors through illegal billing practices and through shell companies. Skilling also changes company policy so the weakest staff get fired every year, which ends up making many of the ones who stay even more competitive. The criminal behavior goes all the way up the ladder. For example, Andy Fastow, the CFO, creates shell companies that trade with each other in order to illegally boost Enron's profits. Not surprisingly, these men end up with prison terms.Gibney's film is an important picture of a Darwinian company that came to symbolize American greed and the crooked men who led it. Recommended.

...because I can't see what's different from what happened here and what the banks did that caused the global collapse of 2008. Turning hard assets into derivatives and selling them on the market? Knowing that a product is worthless and encouraging its trade anyways? This sounds familiar, it's just Enron traded derivatives on fuels and the banks did it on real estate. Thus I guess there is nothing different here other than the banks committed crimes on such a large scale that all of the criminals wouldn't fit into prisons without us building more, plus all of those campaign contributions! Congress couldn't let THAT dry up! So here we sit with 0% interest rates on our savings until the banks recoup every cent that they lost, so I don't see how this is different from what was threatened in Crete - confiscation of a portion of all depositors' funds to make the banks there whole, except here in the U.S. it is happening slooooowly, so nobody complains of outright theft. But I digress.Now to the film itself. It takes almost two hours to chart the history of Enron, from the beginning in the mid 80's to its sudden collapse in 2001. There are interviews with everyone involved with the company from accountants to regular employees, and like all Ponzi schemes, people might have had their doubts and suspicions, but nobody wanted to upset the money train especially if they are on that train. And like all Ponzi schemes Enron came to a sudden abrupt end when there was no way to hide the fact that all of the money and the profits were not real.Also very interesting is the gladiator/macho corporate culture described, largely caused by COO Jeff Skilling waking up one day, realizing he was a nerd, and wanting to throw off that nerd persona. He lost weight, worked out, got Lasik done on his eyes, and began to organize adventure trips for himself and an inner circle of Enron executives, some of which involved actual bodily danger. He instituted an Enron employee ranking system in which employees were ranked from 1-5 and those in the lowest ranks were automatically terminated. It was the Billionaire Boys Club minus the murder and involving a much bigger club. Of course, now the scandal looks almost quaint compared to what we've been living with since 2008.In 2005, when this film was made, such an implosion by a company that had been named "most innovative company" for six consecutive years by CEOs, 1996-2001, the last year being the year of Enron's collapse, was still quite the spectacle. The irony is that if Enron had collapsed in 2011 instead of 2001, I doubt anybody would have gone to jail. Heck, it might not have even been newsworthy except in Texas! Also, the company might have even received a federal bailout.The highlight of the film for me - a video "Christmas card" to Ken Lay made by Enron execs in which they do a comedy sketch about "creative accounting" which turns out to be EXACTLY what the company was doing that hid their problems.

I'll be the first to admit that this film is good but not great about ENRON. All politics aside, I was just left hanging in the balance wanting MORE. Though I can appreciate their limited access to outside footage and English-speaking counterparts, certain scenes tended to drag on a bit and left me wondering what could have been.That said, per my subject heading, I feel that this should be REQUIRED viewing for any concerned citizen grappling with the media coverage and news-spin of this and all other wars. Much like BRAVO's "Anatomy Of A Scene", the unfolding of the 'end of the war' and the subsequent toppling of Saddam's statue in the square both serve as serious examples of the news coverage of ENRON vs. 'The Big Boys'. It's just completely different when seen through the intelligent, capable eyes of the Al-Jazeera staff (than the Enron Boys) than what we're spoon-fed by Fox, et. al. Check it out...... Really.....

Does "The Smartest Guys in the Room" require the smartest theater-goers in the world to understand it? Not exactly, but close. I pay attention to the news but I never really grasped what Enron was all about. I hoped this documentary would straighten me out on "the corporate crime of the century." I now feel I get the basics of what happened in a scary story about rapacious manipulation and greed. But there's a lot that didn't become crystal clear.I taped this movie on CNBC, and it was a good thing. Over a few days I was able to rewind repeatedly as I tried to put together for myself what had really occurred. (I'm trying to become more financially literate in general so this wasn't easy for me.) The main format for this movie is talking heads with, predominantly in the first half of the film, some thematically related songs woven in for atmosphere and lightening. I could have used a little more explanation along the way to understand better what happened in the course of wrongdoings large and small, from the Nigerian barge deal to the California electricity scam. Still, I'm able to walk away with significant illumination. The movie definitely has its strong points. I'd remembered company whistle-blower Sherron Watkins from the news, and she's just as impressive here. When company villain Jeffrey Skilling resigns a year and a half before Enron collapses, right around the time of 9-11, "this was Jim Jones feeding us the Kool-aid and not drinking it himself," she says. The small-print follow-ups at the end, citing Skilling and Fastow's incarcerations and Lay's death, amount to a happy ending. But as Ms. Watkins reminds us: "It's all about the rationalization that you're not doing anything wrong. And it can happen again."