I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

The story of Nick Leeson's contribution to the collapse of Barings Bank is a definite cash-in on the whole sorry story, and I have a bit of a problem with that. OK, so Leeson, he says, made no money from his gambling on the Singapore stock market - but he certainly made money from his autobiography and this film of it. That leaves a nasty taste, somehow.Euan McGregor is fine as Leeson - he doesn't make the character likable and manages to put across some of his motivation for rising in his organisation and then biting the hand that feeds. The story is presented in such a way that you're supposed to feel sorry for Leeson - but you don't. Maybe that is a failure of the film, but he is so arrogant you can't feel anything but a smile when fate finally catches up with him.Well-shot as the film is, it is as empty as the soulless job of working the trading floor. It puts across the coldness of the stock market, where money becomes just another set of noughts, not really real, very convincingly, but is this really enough to make it a good film?

This film has various problems. One is that it really tells us nothing of note that we did not know from newspaper reports at the time. At least it was hot news then. By the time the film came out, it was old hat, and of course, we spend the whole film waiting for the crash and Leeson's arrest. There is no suspense and no plot of any interest.The film might have made up for this if the characters had been interesting, or if they had somehow thrown light on the meaning of life. They don't. Being based on Leeson's own book means that everything is seen from his superficial angle. What really drove him, how he really got into this mess, we never really feel. McGregor does his best, mainly using facial expressions to gloss over what the script does not provide.Anna Friel has a thankless role as his cardboard cutout wife. All the Barings characters are even more two-dimensional. When the real people are still around, I suppose you have to be very careful not to expose yourself to lawsuits. The result is blandness.What's the point of this film?

A cunning scoundrel in exotic Singapore single-handedly brings down Barings Bank, established two centuries ago and one of England's foremost financial institutions. Another wildly improbable sting flick? Not at all - the story is based on actual events and the film sticks pretty close to the facts. Nick Leeson, brilliant and ambitious young trader, superstar of the Singapore stock market, incurs staggering losses. Unwilling to jeopardize his prospects for advancement, he tries to cover his tracks by pulling non-existent rabbits out of imaginary hats. The literally gut-wrenching stress of this Sisyphusian endeavor is illustrated by Leeson's frequent bouts of vomiting (while in prison, he underwent surgery to remove a tumor along with part of his colon and large intestine, and chemotherapy after being released). The film's flaw is that it glosses over the bank's role in the disaster. Barings turned a neophyte loose in an foreign arena with total control of the operation and minimal supervision. Putting the same individual in charge of both the front office and back office bypasses the appropriate checks and balances, and is tantamount to having the fox guard the hen-house. The official report of the Bank of England concluded that Barings' failure to segregate Leeson's duties was "reprehensible," and those with "direct executive responsibility for establishing effective controls must bear much of the blame." Yet little mention is made of this in the film. And the mechanizations of the stock market are downright incomprehensible at times. Nevertheless, this is an interesting story and Ewan McGregor turns in another outstanding performance.

I don't know if Nick Leeson deserved this movie. A man who almost single-handedly made one of Britains big banks bankrupt couldn't be as "innocent" as portrayed in this movie? Or?I didn't know any of the details in the Barings Bank-bankrupcy. I think that helped me in enjoying this movie, because it was quite entertaining. I'm no expert in how trading takes place in the stock market and physically at the stock exchange either. I think that helped too, because I've heard from people who know a lot about it that the way this is portrayed in the movie isn't very realistic. But, as mentioned, I didn't have to worry about that.If you'd like a thriller about financial problems and crimes (a really small genre) I thing you'll enjoy this one. Normal people have no problem in understanding what's happening in the movie.