Review: Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room (A-)

Enron: The Smartest Guy In The Room (A-)
Directed by Alex Gibney
Narrated by Peter Coyote
MPAA: R
Grade: A-

Review by Scott Standish

The incredible rise and fall of Enron is clearly documented in Enron: The Smartest Guy In The Room. The film shows not only the greed and corruption of the Enron corporate elite, but also the tight relationship that the company had with the George W Bush administration. Although the complex deals that Enron structured are hard to follow, this documentary does a great job of focusing on the people involved, and not the deals.

The accusations fly in Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room. According to the film, Enron's traders stole from the company and were rewarded for doing so by the head of the company, Kenneth Lay. Lay and future CEO Jeffrey Skilling gave themselves multi-million dollar bonuses while the company was losing money at an alarming rate. The company repeatedly turned off power plants in California to force the state into rolling blackouts. The blackouts made the price of energy skyrocket and Enron profited from it. The company used fake shell corporations to illegally hide losses while they used Arthur Anderson's shaky accounting principles to report "future profits" as current earnings.

Smart, well made and ultimately fascinating, Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room is one of the finest documentaries I have ever seen about corporate greed. Interviews with Enron insiders and ex-Governor Gray Davis bring excellent insights into the house of cards that was Enron, and the criminals that built it. Once you see Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room, you may never look at large corporations the same way again.