May 22, 2017 · Watch the official trailer
Robert De Niro dangles a rich man on a string, feigning a lack of interest in the random partygoer’s investment offer which a drum beat tones on in the background.
$100 million, $250 million, $300 million, the price keeps rising. De Niro stays firm as the verbal dance continues for several minutes before the final handshake, never really knowing who the slick businessman he spars with is and caring even less.
It’s exactly the kind of exchange you’d expect to see in a biopic film about notorious financier-turned-swindler Bernie Madoff starring the two-time Academy Award winner. A movie about the biggest financial fraud in American history is expected to play it big, especially when the events the film relives have resulted in $50 billion in losses for millions of Americans.
And yet somehow, it’s the only scene of its kind anywhere in “The Wizard of Lies,” a HBO Original Film from “Rain Man” director Barry Levinson adapted from the non-fiction book of the same name by Diana Henriques.
Recent films focusing on real-life economic crisis like Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street” or Adam McKay’s “The Big Short” have flaunted the largeness of the playboy traders making it rich. “The Wizard of Lies” doesn’t do that.
Madoff, as intimately written on the page and wonderfully portrayed by De Niro on the screen, is a catalyst for the action around him, a larger-than-life presence that’s felt in those in the surrounding aura rather than heard booming with fantastical monologues.
“The Wizard of Lies” tells Madoff’s tale from a variety of perspectives, including journalists interviewing Madoff after his conviction, the FBI investigating his scheme after his admission and within the inner monologues of Madoff’s wife and two sons.
Levinson leaps forward and backward chronologically over the course of the film, not relying on conventional story structure to explain the what and how of Madoff’s scheme. Rather, “The Wizard of Lies” is less about the man himself than it is the emotional wreckage his fraudulent empire left in the wake of its collapse. There are moments of bizarre art-house cinema when Madoff wakes up in the middle of an Ambien suicide attempt to confront the demons in his own head.
Throughout all the chaos, De Niro keeps aplomb as Madoff, projecting a stoic confidence that resonates to the audience familiar with the actor’s lengthy career in gangster films. De Niro perfectly exudes Madoff’s relentless commitment to hiding the fraud at any cost and mirrors that with a wonderful frankness once the scheme is revealed. “The Wizard of Lies” is perhaps the least flashy performance De Niro has offered in nearly a decade and it works wonders.
A nearly unrecognizable Michelle Pfeiffer is a revelation as Madoff’s wife Ruth, whose world is thrown into complete upheaval upon the arrest of her husband and the abandonment of everyone around her. The inner turmoil she radiates off the screen in her performance is captivating even in scenes with the gravitation force that is De Niro’s Madoff.
There’s a number of spectacular supporting performances layered throughout “The Wizard of Lies” from Hank Azaria’s wonderful effort as Madoff’s right-hand-man Frank to Michael Kostroff’s turn as brother Peter Madoff and “House of Cards” alum Kristen Connolly’s Stephanie Madoff.
But it’s the work of Alessandro Nivola as Madoff’s elder son Mark that will tear audiences apart emotionally. At the outset, it might appear as if the role will be limited to a relative footnote in the larger Madoff scandal picture. As the film progresses, Nivola drags Mark through a limitless sea of depression, authentically capturing the elder son’s despair in a raw, visceral way that accents and elevates the nuances of De Niro’s performance.
Released with little fanfare on premium cable, “The Wizard of Lies” won’t be getting a lot of attention critically or commercially amid the wealth of summer blockbuster entertainment heading to theaters.
But for moviegoers looking to take a chance on elevated, character-driven drama and seeking top-notch acting performances, it’s hard to do much better this month than “The Wizard of Lies.”
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