Richard Dreyfuss gives a terrific performance as investment con man Bernie Madoff. He's an interesting character, dishonest to the core yet loyal and generous to his friends, although it's unclear whether he was genuinely generous or just interesting in keeping people loyal.It's fascinating to see the long con and how it unravels, and infuriating and disturbing to watch a lone crusader spend fruitless years trying to convince an inept SEC to investigate one of the great financial criminal.The great weakness of the film is that it overly focuses on Madoff's family, including an ungraceful attempt to use his family history of cancer as a symbol.I understand wanting to show how Madoff's actions hurt his family, and the actors are fine, particularly Blythe Danner (still, surprisingly, sexy in her 70s), but what Madoff did hurt so many more people than his family, and while that is shown, it is overshadowed by the rather dull family stuff.I feel the movie should have focused more on the crusader, or on the incompetence of the SEC. Or it could have just been pared down in length.Still, it's a fascinating story and Dreyfuss is a perfect Madoff.

The movie, as does the media, focuses only on Madoff and his investors and not all the businesses that got ruined because of investments. For example my husband and his co-workers worked at a Oppenheimer funds which had a Hedge Fund heavily invested in Madoff. He did nothing wrong, the company closed and most employees including my husband haven't been able to get a job for over 7 years!!!!!! But the SEC who were distracted by Madoff's history as an icon in the industry didn't do the most basic due diligence. The never checked his trading record, which was ZERO!!! The SEC employees still have jobs from this investigation and many got promotions, what the hell!!!!!!!!!!! The SEC was incompetent, and if they did their job correctly in the early phase of his scam, the depth of consequences wouldn't have been so disastrous. Also last time I checked when you are an auditor and you screw up like the SEC, you get FIRED!!!!!!!!!!!

An interesting story based on Bernie Madoff the so called wizard of Wall Street, well played by the entire cast, and informative of what people are willing to do acquiring your money, Madoff may have started out simply trying to impress his friends and family as they stated he had it all before the Ponzi affair, so either he did it and it spun out of control or he became wrapped up in the illusion of his vain wizardry, maybe both, in either case its sad people become so wrapped up and taken so easily by money, never satisfied with what they got, and need something to fill their void of unhappiness, don't pity the poor man, pity the fool, and delusional wizards, the domino effect of the fallout was a atrocity to all the victims, hopefully a lesson to save others in the Madoff's of the future.

Wow; this is the closest thing I've seen to an ABC "movie of the week" in ages! I watched the first half of this two-part mini-series last night. The second half- "The Fall"- airs tonight. Oscar-winning screen legend, Richard Dreyfuss, plays the financial guru/con artist in this semi-biopic; but mostly covers the events leading up to, and tonight, following, his downfall. I saw a review online that said this movie almost makes you root for Bernie, and it does to an extent. It's actually quite humorous; although at times I get the feeling I'm laughing at parts that weren't meant to be funny-?? LOL Peter Scolari and Blythe Danner co-star.