SusieQ / 05 March 2025 / Categories: Movie and TV Shows

Wizard Of Lies

An HBO original movie staring Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer

We have only recently invested in a smart TV. We had an old Sony terrestrial TV and an old DVD player so had swerved the whole internet TV thing. Now the allure of all the choice has worn off, we seem to spend more time looking for something to watch than we do actually watching and the Sky internet broadband package we have doesn’t work that well so we can find ourselves buffering quite a bit which is not the best TV watching experience, that said we managed to get through Wizard of Lies without interruption, it was obviously a quiet night online in our neighbourhood.

We paid £4 to watch on Amazon Prime compared to the other options £15 for Nicole Kidmans Babygirl and about the same for Oscar winner Anona, which was OK, however we had an unexpected visitor pop round just after paying, (no buyers remorse or refund scheme I don’t think?) so had to watch the following day because after paying you only get 48 hours to complete watching, kind of another inconvenience.

OK so the movie. It’s based on the true story of the downfall of Bernie Madoff, played by Robert De Niro, one time chairman of the New York Stock exchange and the mastermind of the biggest Ponzi scheme in history. A Ponzi scheme is a fraud where you take money from people and pretend you are investing it for a return when in fact the whole thing is a rouse.

When the work on the 17th floor, a division of the huge financial investment firm called “The Advisory” is finally exposed as the centre of the fraud by the FBI and SEC securities exchange Commission in October/November 2008 following the blood bath on wall st and the collapse of banking investment house Lehman Brothers, the investigation into the firm and all the people close to Madoff commences. It’s a family affair.

Bernard Madoff in real life March, 2009 ended up pleading guilty to 11 federal counts of securities fraud and sentenced to 150 years in prison. His clients, J.P. Morgan, HSBC amongst them never testified in court.

In the film it was speculated the trail of Bernie Madoff was the biggest government financial cover up ever. One of his son’s Mark who worked for the family business committed suicide, (unable to endure the blame and scrutiny from the victims and media) Andrew, Madoffs other son who also worked for the firm, died of Lymphoma in 2014.

One of my favourite stand out bits in the whole movie is when Bernie’s sons Mark and Andrew are being grilled by the authorities, the SEC investigator played by Amanda Warren and the FBI and the questioning official projects on the brothers how they could possibly have been unaware of what was going on, and a frustrated Mark loses his cool and throws it right back at them, suggesting how was it possible they hadn’t cottoned on sooner. Not much she could say except he was the one being questioned not them.

The story is massive, gripping, meaty and totally shocking. I do remember seeing the news coverage for the trial and having no real idea about the scale of the crime perpetrated. The New York Times compared Bernard Madoff to serial killer Ted Bundy, his behaviour that of a sociopath and De Niro is epic in his portrayal.

The HBO script by Sam Levinson, Sam Baum, and John Burnham Schwartz, adapted from the book of the same name by Diane Henriques.

The film was fast paced, superbly acted and completely character driven by the amazing ensemble cast, who build the story as their characters develop.

Very clever film, very scary business. Left me wondering if I know a Bernie Madoff someone I admire and trust implicitly who is the complete opposite of who they appear to be.