Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.5

Capital Blu-ray Movie Review

Wait, now you're telling me that greed isn't good?

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 11, 2014

One might very well imagine right leaning heads exploding as they realize that Capital actually hails from France and bears the original title Le Capital. As evidenced by recent skirmishes that gave us such memorable foodstuffs as “freedom fries”, there are some in this bulwark of capitalism who don’t take kindly to the supposed socialist leanings of our French comrades (a specifically chosen word, by the way) across the pond, and the fact that this 2012 outing by famed writer-director Costa-Gavras has the temerity to question and critique certain unseemly elements of our economic system will surely grate, if not downright chafe. Costa-Gavras has not exactly been a friend to anyone with any conservative ideas at all, whether those be in the world of politics (Z) or religion (Amen.), and so it should probably come as no great surprise that he hews rather closely to his standard operating procedure with regard to the world of high finance that is at the center of Capital. Any low level grunt in the office world who laments his sad state of life, surrounded by other nine-to-fivers trapped in their fuzzy cubicles, may want to think twice before aiming for the executive suite after seeing Capital, for the film posits a universe of scheming, machinating and backstabbing men and women whose ruthless pursuit of power and money (not necessarily in that order) repeatedly reveals a complete lack of a moral compass or even the barest hint of the milk of human kindness.

Beginning the film with a somewhat startling gambit that breaks the cinematic fourth wall, Costa-Gavras lets his anti- hero Marc Tourneuil (Gad Elmaleh) look directly at the camera and address the audience, alerting the viewer to the fact that this central character is a fairly oily mass of Machiavellian deceit. In fact Marc is addressing the audience on a jade green golf course as his mentor, Phenix Bank CEO Jack Marmande (Daniel Mesguich) lies clutching his chest on the grass after having suffered a heart attack. While others rush to Marmande’s aid, Tourneuil is instead plotting his ascent up the corporate ladder, seeing his boss’ infirmity as nothing less than the next rung on which to plant his nicely appointed custom shoes.

Tourneuil is appointed as interim CEO while Marmande recovers, a tactic that the bank’s board looks at as a temporary band aid until a more suitable pawn willing to do their bidding can be propped up as the ostensible man in charge. Tourneuil of course has other plans, both for himself and the bank, plans which are both aided and hampered by the ruthless intervention of Dittmar Rigule (Gabriel Byrne), a United States based hedge fund manager whose company owns a sizable stake in Phenix Bank. Capital plays out as a rather convoluted chess game between economics masters, though rather interestingly it really doesn’t depend upon the kind of insider lingo and knowledge that was virtually a prerequisite for understanding the somewhat tonally similar Margin Call. Instead Capital boils down to nattily dressed businessmen acting pretty much like loose guns in the Wild West, albeit via Skype conferencing rather than showdowns at the O.K. Corral.

A lot of Costa-Gavras’ oeuvre features more or less “normal” people getting sucked into some vast conspiracy or otherwise nefarious activity. Think of films like Z, Missing or The Music Box, and it becomes obvious that Costa-Gavras presents an entré into sometimes labyrinthine cover-ups or scheming via an apparently innocent bystander. There is no such gambit afoot in Capital, and in fact Tourneuil is easily one of Costa-Gavras’ slimiest central characters. This is a man who is out to accrue money and the power it creates without even the slightest shadings of moral ambiguity. Tourneuil is smart and cunning and apparently well cultured, but he’s also capable of great viciousness, as at least a couple of developments late in the film prove.

That makes Capital a film without anyone to really root for, unless one transfers one’s sympathies to Tourneuil’s old money wife Diane (Natascha Régnier), a woman who has figuratively been there and done that with immense amounts of wealth and who isn’t quite so sure she wants to see Marc journey down a supposedly gold lined path. The sympathy for Diane is probably only increased when Marc attempts to become involved with a supermodel named Nassim (Liya Kebede), a gorgeous woman whom Rigule has placed just beyond Marc’s reach as a sort of tantalizing bribe. Marc's eye also wanders to a woman named Maud (Celine Sallette), who shows up during one of his treks to subsume a Japanese bank.

Despite the fact that the film has an overabundance of unlikable characters, Costa-Gavras sets up the power struggle with appealing briskness and a fair amount of corporate intrigue, making the film play just slightly like a pulpy summer beach read. Performances are uniformly excellent, if somewhat taciturn most of the time, with Byrne especially memorable as the spectacularly calculating Rigule. As befits its high finance environment, the film is quite stunningly beautiful, with Marc jetting to and fro to a number of international locations like a superpowered pawn attempting to maneuver around any number of supposedly unassailable kings.

Capital Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Capital is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Cohen Film Collection with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. This is a nicely sharp and well detailed looking high definition presentation which benefits from the globetrotting that is part of Marc's activities. Aerial establishing shots offer some great depth of field, while the cool blue interiors of many of the corporate settings offer a chilled ambience that seems to perfectly mirror the cold blooded attitude of the executives. Colors are nicely saturated and accurate looking, and contrast is strong and consistent. Fine detail is generally quite good, even without the glut of extreme close-ups that were on tap in the other Costa-Gavras film Cohen is releasing simultaneously with this one, Amen.. There's just the lightest dusting of compression artifacts in a couple of moments, but otherwise this is a problem free presentation.

Capital Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Capital's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track is ostensibly in French, though there's quite a bit of English on tap here as well. This is by and large a simple dialogue driven film and so the 5.1 mix tends to only really open up in scenes like a club that Marc and Nassim go to, or with regard to Armand Amar's quirky but effective score. Fidelity is excellent and the track has no problems of any kind to report.

Capital Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Interview with Director Costa-Gavras (1080p; 16:43) is hosted by Annette Insdorf, the Director of Undergraduate Film Studies at Columbia University. Some of this is fairly obvious stuff, such as Costa-Gavras' assertion that wanting to make a film about money led to Capital being produced, but there's also some interesting information about the director's career in general.


• Interview with Gabriel Byrne (480i; 10:14) seems to be a snippet from a longer piece which finds Byrne reminiscing about his history with Costa-Gavras' films.


• Behind the Scenes with Gad Emaleh (480i; 18:58) is in French with English subtitles and is a rather whimsical set of vignettes featuring the film's star.


• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 1:55)

Capital Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Capital might have worked a bit better had Costa-Gavras given the viewer one character within the bank to root for. Instead one is forced to choose the lesser of several evils, a not particularly palatable task that tends to make the viewer feel almost like a co-conspirator at times. Anyone who watched the global economy collapse a few years ago is probably going to be perturbed if not downright angry at the cavalier attitudes repeatedly on display throughout the film, where things like Marc proclaiming himself a "reverse Robin Hood" (i.e., stealing from the poor to benefit the rich) are met with outright approval. Costa-Gavras has always worn his political and socioeconomic sentiments rather blatantly on his sleeve, and there's absolutely no question that he means to indict a system that seems formulated to bilk innocent people out of their hard earned cash. Luckily, the director keeps things moving at such a brisk pace that the film never seems overly strident. There may in fact be no one to root for here, but that's ultimately probably the point. Recommended.