My family went to see the Other Guys with Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg last night. It was quite entertaining as a spoof of the buddy cop movie and general silliness ensued. It opens with Sam Jackson and Dwayne Johnson (the Rock) as hero cops that engage in outlandish acts of destruction while pursuing criminals--incredibly over the top. But most interestingly, it ends with a serious of graphs and figures to illustrate the inequalities in the economy, including an illustration of Ponzi schemes, the ratios of CEO pay to workers, the costs of the bailouts, the number of people who got bonuses after the bailouts, and so on. I expect to see rants about inequality by my lefty friends.
I don't expect to see it at the end of an action comedy, although one of the key bad guys in this movie was a hedge fund type, played by the always funny Steve Coogan, who was moving money around to cover up his previous losses. So, there was an element running through the movie of a bit of outrage about the financial folks who abused the economy. I just wish life imitated art--that more of the folks responsible for today's mess did make bad deals with Chechens and Nigerians like the Coogan character as a bit of karmic payback would provide more than a bit of schadenfreude.
One spoiler after the break:
The Chechens are upset because Coogan had worked with them on a deal to make a Checken version of Dora the Explorer. Perhaps the highlight of the movie for me.
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