Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005)
Jigsaw Productions

Description

The inside story of one of historys greatest business scandals in which top executives of America's 7th largest company walked away with over one billion dollars while investors and employees lost everything.

Collected reviews and ratings

10 Entertainment Weekly | Owen Gleiberman

Based on the book by Fortune magazine reporters Bethany McLean (who broke the story) and Peter Elkind, The Smartest Guys in the Room lays bare, in funny and shocking video clips, the culture of arrogance at Enron.
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9.0 Los Angeles Times | Kenneth Turan

It's a chilling, completely fascinating documentary that reveals the face of unregulated greed in a way that's every bit as terrifying as Lon Chaney's unmasking in "The Phantom of the Opera."
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8.8 TV Guide | Ken Fox

While muckraking documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney's ripping, fast-paced documentary doesn't illuminate every shadowy corner of the Enron labyrinth (how could it?), it does give an entertaining overview.
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8.0 Washington Post | Michael O'Sullivan

Where "Enron" succeeds, though, is not merely by making complicated financial transactions accessible to the layman. The story is, as the film points out, a human tragedy, after all, as much as it is a tale of monstrous business failure.
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8.0 New York Times | A. O. Scott

Interweaving Peter Coyote's sober, ever-so-slightly sarcastic voice-over narration with interviews and video clips and accompanied by an anthology of well-chosen pop songs, it manages to be both informative and entertaining.
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7.5 Rolling Stone | Peter Travers

Alex Gibney's riveting documentary is a rape story, with the public trust as the victim.
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5.0 Salon.com | Andrew O'Hehir

Speaking personally, I believe that everything in "Enron" is true and rigorously sourced, and that the story of Enron is just the story of American capitalism in its most dramatic form. I also believe that subject matter this important deserves more honest, more direct and simpler treatment.
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