Written and Directed by Alex Gibney
Like many documentaries, this one seeks to educate, and it seems people outside the direct pulse of New York find it difficult to really understand the Eliot Spitzer scandal, and what it meant to New York, the economy, and ultimately, the world.
The rest of the nation sees a disgraced Governor, nothing new in America, but the full wrath of this scandal would not be felt by the American public until much later, which continues to happen now.
Eliot Spitzer was a fire-starter DA in New York, unafraid of anyone that lies before him. Bread from wealth, but not enamored of it, Spitzer was the perfect candidate to storm Wall Street, and he did so with fervor. He could see that trading practices, lending, and insider trading were beyond out of control, and he did everything in his power to curb these rising white collar crimes.
However, the media will have you remember one story, the "family man" governor who got caught cheating on his family with a well established escort service, his main escort splashing the pages of the New York tabloids with saucy tales of their Manhattan encounters, or of her travels to service him on the road.
In an age where sexual judgment still lies on the side of spoken truths, rather than practiced ones, Spitzer's obvious political relationship with his wife remains an odd target to attack the man. However, they managed to turn a man doing important national work into a sexual deviant in the media, deflating not only his direct work, but the law enforcement issue as a whole.
Convenient, then, that all of this happens right at the break of the iceberg, that very moment when banking regulations when right out the window, predatory lending was practically encouraged, all so fewer could own more. Our one hero against this cause? Rendered useless against the cause as a whole.
It's interesting, that in times of economic prosperity, a politician of even greater notoriety (the President, say) can be an even bigger horn dog, get caught with semen on the dress, and survive politically, but when a financial services watchdog does it, he is easily buried.
Is our money in the hands of so few? Will we continue to let good men be buried, their issues ignored, because of personal deviancy? These are the main question Gibney examines throughout the documentary. Spitzer is righteous, confrontational, honest...in other words, himself. He answers all questions with the fortitude of a Marine, never wavering from the truth or its effects, like so many politicians with Political Mouth tend to do. Kudos.
Like many of Gibney's documentaries, it is thought provoking to the point of exasperation. Sifting through the myriad of perceptions, it can be difficult to find the truth, and unlike so many other documentarians, Gibney is not obsessed with the truth. He's merely interested in the players in the story, how they connect, how what they do matters to them, to him the truth is simply one of the facts, and the facts are never the interesting part of Gibney's documentaries, rather, the way the facts are used, against or for certain people.
An eye opener for people that thought Spitzer was merely another philandering politician whose case got overblown, it just goes to show the whole story is more complicated than CNN reports and tabloid headlines, the effects are often felt deep, and nation wide.
9.0/10
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