Arbitrage

Ostensibly, Arbitrage is a story about a silver-tongued, silver-haired Wall Street whiz getting in way over his head. Really, it’s just about a callous man playing shell-games with every element of his life—and losing.

Robert Miller (Richard Gere) is a big shot hedge fund manager whose greed has gotten him into a bind. He’s short $400 million (of other people’s invested money). Desperate to sell his company before financial auditors notice the gaping hole in his records, Miller is on edge; just barely spinning lies well enough to keep the financial world—and his own family—in the dark.

His rapport with family, especially his wife (Susan Sarandon) is convincing enough to draw a twinge of sympathy. Poor guy: he’s just made a few mistakes at work. This is where he’d rather be—dinner with his nearest and dearest, but that gosh-darn financial realm has an iron grip on his heart, mind and blood pressure.

That is, until he steps out after dessert for ‘work’, stopping to pick up his 20-something mistress. Goodbye twinge.

Miller’s carefully orchestrated business plan goes belly-up the moment his car does, killing his paramour. The publicity of the accident will bring unwanted attention to his mendacious business affairs.

Ditching the body, Miller’s maze of lies becomes a full-blown catacomb. From here, the story hinges on one question: will Miller’s unethical resolve crumble before his delicate alibis do?

I’m not entirely sure what the game plan was with Arbitrage; Miller is depicted as a two-faced, thieving philanderer from the beginning, and that’s before he really puts his mind to it. Watching him scramble to sustain his bogus life with more lies hardly makes him a cheer-worthy protagonist.

However, credit to newbie director Nickolas Jarecki, who somehow made me want to spend more time watching a character I didn’t like; the mark of a good storyteller. His direction is tastefully absent—successful in the mistakes he avoids rather than any particular artistic flavour be brings to the table.

Despite the intense pathos of this character, something about Gere always seems soft and unthreatening. At his most dangerously unhinged, he still comes off like an angry puppy. The best exception is amid the car wreckage, where Gere reveals Miller’s true colours wonderfully: the unmistakable, selfish panic of the self-preserving weasel.

The supporting cast is solid throughout; Saradon rarely disappoints; Laetitia Casta plays Miller’s pouty lover with frosty panache; Miller’s young accomplice Jimmy (Nate Parker) exhibits an internal struggle between wanting to honour the concept of loyalty, even when applied to someone as undeserving of loyalty as Miller. It’s a complex emotional scenario, and Parker plays it well. Tim Roth is satisfyingly straightforward as beleaguered bulldog detective hot on Miller’s trail.

Without a sympathetic character to side with, Arbitrage becomes a case study in the virulence of lies. Like a disease, they ravage Miller from the inside out before his business, family and friends become symptomatic. And the worst part is, he never once considers that he might be sick.