This movie was extremely true. Every fact that they stated, every detail that they mentioned, the order in which events occured and the events themselves and what caused them are all historically accurate. The only thing that might be a little bit fudged, or Hollywoodized is some of the language and a little bit of the dialogue that occurs between the characters.

'Too Big to Fail' captures the frustration of government officials and the arrogance of Wall Street leaders. The HBO docudrama accurately depicts the panic that gripped the Federal Reserve Bank and the Treasury Department as they scrambled to avoid another Great Depression. Midway through the HBO docudrama "Too Big to Fail," the head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York despairs that ordinary Americans "have no idea the whole thing is about to fall down."(Too Big To Fail) He's referring not to the stock market, which already was plunging as the global financial crisis struck in late-2008, but to the entire U.S. economy as the conflagration on Wall Street threatened to spread far wider.

The movie did a very good job staying true what really happened Early on, Paulson complains to his staff that they have been behind on everything as the crisis began to emerge. And that's true! The crisis actually started in the late summer of 2007. Paulson's first effort, late that year, was to get a bunch of banks to assemble a giant off balance-sheet concoction that would save each individual bank's off-balance-sheet monstrosity. It was a complete flop.

In the movie, as bankers and government officials frantically try to save Lehman, Chris Flowers, the private equity investor and banking impresario, is depicted as informing Paulson and Geithner that AIG is teetering on the edge. In their fumbled response, he immediately grasps the truth. "They're not on top of it," he tells a confederate. And they weren't. In real life, AIG had been struggling since the middle of 2007. Paulson and Geithner of course had some inkling of the problems at the world's largest insurer. But they didn't prepare for it. (Time magazine: Business) Nobody prepared for the melt down, they were all in denial.

When I was watching the movie in the last few scenes they stated how much each bank received from the United States and I was astounded, at first I thought that it had to be made up, or just numbers that hollywood might have estimated, but the numbers were true and it was astounding how much money the government gave to the banks in one day.

10/28/2008 Wells Fargo & Co.San Francisco Calif. $25,000,000,000
10/28/2008 State Street Corp. Boston Mass. $2,000,000,000
10/28/2008 Bank of America Corp.1 Charlotte N.C. $15,000,000,000
10/28/2008 JPMorgan Chase & Co. New York N.Y. $25,000,000,000
10/28/2008 Citigroup Inc. New York N.Y. 25,000,000,000
10/28/2008 Morgan Stanley New York N.Y. $10,000,000,000
10/28/2008 Goldman Sachs Group Inc. New York N.Y. $10,000,000,000
10/28/2008 Bank of New York Mellon Corp. New York N.Y. $3,000,000,000
(CNN Money)

The very last scene of the movie Ben Bernanke, the Fed Chairmen made a statement. “How do we know that the banks are going to use the money the way we asked them to, they will lend it out, won’t they?” and Henry, the Head of the Treasury said, “Of course they will. Of Course they will” This conversation was probably played on by Hollywood, but it set up for the closing credits which continued to make the true statement. Following the passage of TARP (the gov. bailout plan) the banks made fewer loans and markets continued to tumble. Unemployment rose to over 10% and millions lost their homes. In 2009 markets stabilized and the slide into global depression was averted.”

This movie did a great job portraying the frustration of the Treasury and the government officials, they also did a fairly good job portraying the selfishness of the major bankers and the movie did an excellent job staying with what really happened. I give this docudrama 5 stars.

{To be continued. Ed.}