Bernie Madoff : lived a life of privilege and power, with a penthouse in Manhattan, homes in Montauk and Palm Beach, and access to titans of finance, philanthropy, show business and real estate.
Madoff was also a bigtime thief, who swindled clients out of $65 billion, and whose Ponzi scheme investment scam still ranks as the biggest financial fraud in U.S. history.
That's the true story told in the HBO movie, "The Wizard of Lies," which brings Robert De Niro to TV, playing Madoff in the months leading up to Madoff's December 2008 arrest, and his subsequent imprisonment (Madoff was sentenced to 150 years behind bars.)
The sensational outline of the Madoff scandal suggests "The Wizard of Lies" might be a righteous screed against greed, mixed with guilty-pleasure ogling of luxury settings, topped with a generous dollop of schadenfreude at seeing the mighty fall.
Instead, "The Wizard of Lies" spends much of its overlong two hours and 15 minutes running time repeating how Madoff's crimes victimized members of his family.
At the center is Madoff, who De Niro plays as a mostly low-key operator (though ugly temper flares when Madoff snaps at his granddaughter for daring to bring up the financial meltdown.)
Those who knew the real Madoff described him, as model Carmen Dell'Orefice recalled to Vanity Fair, as "quiet, not a storyteller, not a conversationalist."
Dell'Orefice, who ultimately lost her life savings after investing them with Madoff's firm, continued,
"I often thought he was perhaps bored. He was just Bernie, pleasant and polite."
The script for "The Wizard of Lies," by Sam Levinson, John Burnham Schwartz and Samuel Baum, is based on Diana B. Henriques' 2011 nonfiction account, "The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust" (Henriques appears as herself in a few scenes, interviewing Madoff in prison.)
As written, directed by Barry Levinson ("Wag the Dog," "Diner") and performed by De Niro, Madoff remains an enigma. He came from humble beginnings and built a fortune, became a Wall Street star, helped launch the NASDAQ stock market, and served on important industry boards.
So when did Madoff decide to start cheating investors? It's impossible to tell from "The Wizard of Lies." In the film, publicity about the scandal explodes (we see several clips from news coverage at the time.) But about all Madoff says regarding his misdeeds is to complain that the 2007-2008 financial crisis made him a scapegoat.
"They needed a villain," Madoff says, someone to send to the gallows to feel better about a "rigged" system. Well, the system sure was rigged in Madoff's favor for nearly 20 years, before his crimes caught up with him. "The Wizard of Lies" suggests that Madoff felt little or no remorse because, as he says, "the reality is, people are greedy."
If we never get much insight into Madoff's motivations, we get plenty of reassurance that the rest of the family had no idea of the patriarch's schemes. Wife Ruth (played by Michelle Pfeiffer with a broad Queens accent and incessant cigarette smoking) is distraught -- not about her husband's victims, but about what's going to happen to her.
"Are they going to take the apartment away?" she asks her husband. "What about the houses?"
Madoff's sons, Mark (Alessandro Nivola) and Andrew (Nathan Darrow), also keep insisting they knew nothing of their father's shady dealings, despite working at the company. Everyone else suspects the sons were in on it, and "The Wizard of Lies" makes it clear how savage the public criticism of the Madoff brothers was.
But despite the sad fates of members of the Madoff family, "The Wizard of Lies" fails to summon much pathos or deliver much insight into Wall Street's get-rich-at-any-cost ethos.
As Andrew says, "It's hard to tell our story," acknowledging how challenging it is to muster tears for the three Madoff family members when "there are thousands of victims."
"The Wizard of Lies" underscores that point, telling us less about why people like Bernie Madoff think it's OK to enrich themselves at the expense of others than to offer a new twist on the old adage, "Money can't buy happiness" - if you get caught, that is.
The script for "The Wizard of Lies," by Sam Levinson, John Burnham Schwartz and Samuel Baum, is based on Diana B. Henriques' 2011 nonfiction account, "The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust" (Henriques appears as herself in a few scenes, interviewing Madoff in prison.)
As written, directed by Barry Levinson ("Wag the Dog," "Diner") and performed by De Niro, Madoff remains an enigma. He came from humble beginnings and built a fortune, became a Wall Street star, helped launch the NASDAQ stock market, and served on important industry boards.
So when did Madoff decide to start cheating investors? It's impossible to tell from "The Wizard of Lies." In the film, publicity about the scandal explodes (we see several clips from news coverage at the time.) But about all Madoff says regarding his misdeeds is to complain that the 2007-2008 financial crisis made him a scapegoat.
"They needed a villain," Madoff says, someone to send to the gallows to feel better about a "rigged" system. Well, the system sure was rigged in Madoff's favor for nearly 20 years, before his crimes caught up with him. "The Wizard of Lies" suggests that Madoff felt little or no remorse because, as he says, "the reality is, people are greedy."
If we never get much insight into Madoff's motivations, we get plenty of reassurance that the rest of the family had no idea of the patriarch's schemes. Wife Ruth (played by Michelle Pfeiffer with a broad Queens accent and incessant cigarette smoking) is distraught -- not about her husband's victims, but about what's going to happen to her.
"Are they going to take the apartment away?" she asks her husband. "What about the houses?"
Madoff's sons, Mark (Alessandro Nivola) and Andrew (Nathan Darrow), also keep insisting they knew nothing of their father's shady dealings, despite working at the company. Everyone else suspects the sons were in on it, and "The Wizard of Lies" makes it clear how savage the public criticism of the Madoff brothers was.
But despite the sad fates of members of the Madoff family, "The Wizard of Lies" fails to summon much pathos or deliver much insight into Wall Street's get-rich-at-any-cost ethos.
As Andrew says, "It's hard to tell our story," acknowledging how challenging it is to muster tears for the three Madoff family members when "there are thousands of victims."
"The Wizard of Lies" underscores that point, telling us less about why people like Bernie Madoff think it's OK to enrich themselves at the expense of others than to offer a new twist on the old adage, "Money can't buy happiness" - if you get caught, that is.
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