terrible... so disappointed.

Strong and Moving!

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

6/2/18. Another perspective on the 2008 financial debacle. While watching this, you have to wonder if this Chinese-run bank wasn't singled out to be the scapegoat for the what happened during the 2008 Great Recession. Just seemed like an easy target to get picked on, while the mega-banks got away with murder. Granted they had their problems with record-keeping, but they weren't the only ones. So, watch this with that in mind. Oscar-nominated and worth catching.

Documentary that doubles as a hagiography of a family of directors of a small Chinatown bank chain as they are brought up on mortgage fraud charges for wholesale fabrication of mortgage banking records sold on to Fannie Mae. They are proposed to be the victims of awful low level employee loan officers who fabricated and extorted the clients whose records they helped fabricate. What it actually shows is a family of shady bank directors who successfully firewalled themselves (take a page from Stevie Cohen!) from criminal guilt. Congratulations. A systemic problem that large wasn't found because they didn't want it found. There's a few words about tax fraud in this film but the subject passes by quickly. Make no mistake though, that is the scam going on here. The default rates on these loans was so low because the applicants actually made much more money and/or had assets that they never paid taxes on. Possibly kept in the Abacus Bank security deposit vaults shown early in the film. The gift note is mentioned prominently in the film, a note where a relative or person connected to the borrower promises a money transfer and this promissory note is then added to the mortgage file. If the makers of this film were really interested in what actually was happening at Abacus, a fascinating thing to do would have been to try and find the authors of these notes. I suspect they wouldn't find many, and that most of these promissory notes were to cover for mortgage applicants pulling their own unreported money out of whatever bolthole they had it shoved into.Was the prosecution and dog and pony show of dragging people in chains worth it? In hindsight, probably not, but that doesn't change the amount of shade going on at Abacus.

This documentary shows you how politically motivated are the justice system. Rather than picking on banks that defrauded American trillions of dollars, they choose to indict a small family bank in Chinatown. T's disgusting when you understand the scope of what the mortgage crisis did to America and not surprising that the only ones prosecuted were Chinese-American.The DAs in this film looks like pompous legal heavy hitter-wannabes tainted by self-righteous vain-glories.

This film received a standing ovation at the Chicago International Film Festival. At the Q and A after the film the family was as genuine as in the movie. Not only is this a story about government picking on the small guy (small by banking standards) but also a nice movie about immigration and family values. The entire movie was shot while filmmaker Steve James (Hoop Dreams) was unaware if the family or bank would be found innocent or guilty of mortgage fraud. Unfortunately the court proceedings are represented by paintings and live audio, but you still get the feeling of being in the courtroom. Even a couple of jurors are interviewed. Do not expect to sit on the edge of your seat with anxiety but a very interesting, thoughtful film