subject: Watch Unraveled Full Movie 2012 Online [print this page] Just days before Bernard Madoff captured headlines as the largest Ponzi schemer in U.S. history, Marc Dreier, a prominent Manhattan attorney, was arrested for orchestrating a massive fraud scheme that netted hundreds of millions of dollars from hedge funds. Brazen forgeries and impersonations branded the white collar crime spree remarkable. Unraveled is set in the purgatory of house arrest -- an Upper East Side penthouse -- where the Court has ordered Dreier confined until his sentencing day. The film weaves Dreier's struggle to prepare for the possibility of life imprisonment with first-person flashbacks, which reveal his audacious path of destruction. Destroyed by his own hubris, Dreier attempts to grasp his tragic unraveling. With unprecedented access, Unraveled exposes a mastermind of criminal deception.
A mini-genre of documentaries about the financial crisis has erupted in the last couple of years; they include the Oscar-winning Inside Job, Casino Jack and the United States of Money, and the upcoming Chasing Madoff. One of the most incisive to add to the list is Marc H. Simons Unraveled, which was showcased at the Los Angeles Film Festival. This is a less comprehensive work than Inside Job, concentrating on one white collar criminal -- attorney Marc Dreier, who embezzled more than $400 million from hedge funds and a few private individuals. Simon, an attorney who once worked for Dreier, was granted unprecedented access to his former employer during Dreiers 60-day house arrest in between his conviction and sentencing. The fascinating human portrait that emerges should draw appreciative if limited audiences.
Most of the film consists of Dreier himself reflecting on his past. The film also records Dreiers interactions with his son and with attorneys who advise him on how to prepare for his sentencing hearing. The action takes place in Dreiers lavish, Upper East Side apartment, adorned with Warhol and Rothko paintings. Dreiers other possessions included a $12 million home in the Hamptons and an $18 million yacht. A graduate of Yale and Harvard Law School, Dreier is not just high-powered but whip-smart; one amusing sequence shows him matching wits with the players on Jeopardy and answering every question before the contestants. But to maintain his lavish lifestyle and his growing legal empire, he swindled and borrowed money that he could not repay.
While the film is clearly intended as an indictment of the culture of greed that poisoned so much of American culture during the last decade, one longs for more psychological insight into Dreiers compulsions. At one point Dreier says that his dissatisfaction with his personal life led him to seek compensation in the reckless acquisition of money and possessions, but he provides few details that might put a more illuminating face on an all-too-common syndrome. Other elements in the film are far more telling, as when Dreier reveals his fears about what prison life will entail.Pic's access partly stems from the fact that director Marc H. Simon was employed as a lawyer at Dreier's solo-shingle Manhattan firm, Dreier LLP. That Simon also lost his job due to his boss' world-class malfeasance, which involved nearly a billion dollars in funds and securities fraudulently put on the firm's books when it was hemorrhaging money, doesn't appear to fill him with anger toward Dreier. (Or if it does, it's well hidden.) As the camera dwells on Dreier, under house arrest in his uber-tony New York apartment prior to his July 2009 conviction, a certain sympathy toward the swindler seeps into the film that may strike some viewers as interesting and others as abhorrent.Watch free movies online
"I lost my way, my common sense, my judgment," Dreier says, in some ways using Simon's film as a confessional. How he lost his way is really never sufficiently explained, making the decision to cast Dreier as the central narrator of his own tale highly questionable. It's depiction of him as a man without friends (except for his poodle), with only college-age son Spencer as a family companion, may help explain why no one appears onscreen to cast further light on Dreier's character and behavior, but it nevertheless creates the impression of a needless gap in the docu's overall storytelling. (No apparent effort is made to gain input from Dreier's former partners Neil Baritz and William Federman.) Having amassed more than two decades of experience as a New York lawyer, Dreier chose to strike out on his own after dissolving his partnership with Baritz and Federman in 2002, and, in his own depiction -- which the film takes at face value -- created Dreier LLP purely on the faith and credit of his financial backers. Eventually, the firm grew to employ 800 attorneys plus staff, expanding to offices in six cities.
The key to Dreier's fall, as far as this story goes, appears to be his obsession with keeping up appearances. Although he was never sufficiently capitalized to maintain the business, let alone grow it, Dreier says he was driven to seem sufficiently successful in order to attract well-heeled clients who in turn could bring needed business and revenue to the firm. Essentially, his amassing of luxury goods, from cars to artwork, far exceeded revenues; when the bills came in, Dreier turned to fraud. His downfall is illustrated with animated sequences, drawn in a by now overly familiar style that might be termed graphic-novel realism.Much of the pic, however, shows Dreier living in his pad on borrowed time, poring over the New York Times, watching TV with Spencer and cuddling with his dog. This picture of white-collar criminal as Everyman raises some serious ethical issues, not least of which is the question whether such luxury of space and time could ever be granted to blue-collar crooks nabbed for stealing far less money. The film, in some ways, can be viewed as a luxury good itself, unintentionally demonstrating how the rich aren't like the rest of us, even when they plead guilty.
Shot entirely at Driers NY apartment, Drier opens up in very candid conversations talking about his life, his law firm, how and why he pulled the cons he pulled, his children, his beloved dog whom Drier knows he will never see again if sentencing is harsh. This is a man who has lost it all and as the clock ticks to sentencing, you see him become more visibly beleaguered and drawn. You hear the remorse in his voice; the apology for his behavior yet his lack of comprehension as to what inside of him made him so morally deficient as to perpetrate the crimes.Where UNRAVLED excels is in its lack of editorializing. We are presented Drier at face value. Director Simon, a former attorney in Drier's firm, leaves it to the audience to decide the good, the bad and the ugly; draw out own conclusions as to who and what Drier is. Does he deserve forgiveness? Redemption? Is he a victim of society and the all consuming greed that fuels it? Or is he just a good actor? What would I do if in Driers position? You are drawn into Driers story thanks to the personalization. From a production standpoint, the film is polished, with crisp, razor-edged cinematography blended with sharp graphic novel illustrative animation that depicts the past and any prior events in Driers life. This further aids in the objectivity of the film as there is nothing recreated or simulated for the cameras.
