Arbitrage
Nicholas Jarecki
The story: Billionaire Robert Miller (Richard Gere) is juggling family life, his French artist mistress and a merger deal that would ensure the survival of his hedge fund. It also means that his ill-advised gamble on a Russian copper mine would remain unexposed. Then a car accident happens and his world threatens to spin out of control.

Despite the title, this is not a financial drama in the vein of Margin Call (2011). Nor is it as compelling.
Besides, while the term arbitrage refers to the exploitation of a price difference between different markets, that does not describe the financial transactions in the movie.
Simply put, what Robert Miller does in order to push through the merger is fraud or lying or cheating, as another character points out witheringly.
The set-up for the film by first-time director Nicholas Jarecki is also a little too obvious in this post Occupy Wall Street-protest movement age.
Robert is just too rich to be the good guy. And when he is first shown as the loving husband and father at his 60th birthday party, you know that the facade is going to crumble soon enough.
And it does. He leaves his own birthday celebration to cavort about with his mistress Julie (Laetitia Casta) after fobbing off his wife Ellen (an underused Susan Sarandon) with some excuse.
The car crash flings the movie in another direction.
Suddenly, Robert is trying to orchestrate a cover-up in order not to jeopardise the merger. A detective (Tim Roth) starts sniffing around and the son of Robert’s former driver gets pulled into the investigation.
The crime thriller part of Arbitrage is unfortunately not very satisfying as it hinges on connections that feel arbitrary and a police manoeuvre that is laughably amateurish. And it takes up a huge chunk of the plot.
It is left to the silver-haired Gere to shoulder the movie.
The one-time sex symbol with turns in films such as American Gigolo (1980) and Pretty Woman (1990) is ageing gracefully and does a decent job of conveying Robert’s arrogance and self-absorption. But at the same time, it also feels like a performance that glides along the surface.
You wish there was a meatier script with sharper dialogue for Gere to really grapple with. As it is, Robert is not that fascinating a character to build an entire movie around.
(ST)