Kevin's Watch

Great documentary about the financial meltdown, and the industry leaders who brought us to it.

While the film is not without flaws(1)(2), it's a great look at the causes behind the meltdown and the fallout from it.

While I appreciate a lot of what Obama has done over the last few years, one of my biggest complaints about him is the complete and total failure to enact any kind of real financial reforms. If he couldn't do it in 2009, how are we going to get real reform in 2013 or 2014, or even later?

(1) It certainly plays fast & loose with the interviews... I understand they need to edit for time in a film like this, but it still seems like some of the cuts are quite arbitrary, and I'd like to see the full interviews sometime.

(2) It also criticizes everyone involved for, basically, not seeing the meltdown coming. Sure, hindsight is 20/20, but at the time... noone seriously thought things would be as bad as they got.

I enjoyed it, but I was supposed to. I'm just not sure it will be effective in persuading more than a small number of fence sitters, though. The agenda and viewpoint are clear, so I do not fault it for the same things you do. However, I think it errs by sacrificing more in depth investigation/explanation for the sake of creating a more compelling narrative (likely relegating it to the category of good but boring and mostly ignored documentaries). Some may dismiss it because of its bias, but I think that would be mistaking it for an informative piece, like PBS's Frontline report a year or so ago on most of the same stuff), instead of an argumentative piece. And that returns me to the problem that the choices they made to make the film entertaining seem to prevent it from being successful on its own terms.

Of course, the problem with this is that I may be giving people more credit than they deserve. Making solid points seems to be less important in the public sphere than sounding right and scoring emotional points.