Too Big to Fail

Too Big to Fail is a 2011 American television drama about the 2008 financial crisis, centred on Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson as he tries to contain the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the wider damage spreading through Wall Street. Working alongside Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke and New York Fed president Timothy Geithner, Paulson faces resistance from within government to bailing out the failing bank and its chief executive, Richard Fuld, and must weigh the consequences of letting it go under.

The film is directed by Curtis Hanson, the twelfth of the thirteen features he made and his follow-up to 2007's Lucky You. Peter Gould wrote the screenplay, adapted from Andrew Ross Sorkin's book, and Ezra Swerdlow produced for HBO Films with Spring Creek Pictures and Deuce Three Productions. The cast includes William Hurt as Paulson, Paul Giamatti as Bernanke, Billy Crudup as Geithner, James Woods as Fuld, John Heard as Joe Gregory and Topher Grace as Jim Wilkinson, among a credited cast of sixty-three.

Released in November 2011, the film runs ninety-seven minutes. On IMDb it holds a rating of 7.2 from around 21,000 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 6.9 from roughly 278 votes. A critics' score of 6 out of 10 from thirty reviews places it close to the audience ratings, suggesting a broadly similar response from reviewers and viewers.