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Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room (15)
Jun 9 2006 By Graham Young, Birmingham Mail
THIS Oscar-nominated documentary has been made extra topical by last month's court case which found chairman Ken Lay and CEO Jeff Skilling guilty of what you might call 'corporate manslaughter'.
They were both at the heart of one of the biggest meltdowns in US business history, shining examples of the dangers of white collar greed and deceit.
Based on the bestselling book by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, director Alex Gibney tells the inside story of how executives from America's seventh largest company walked away with more than one billion dollars while investors and employees lost everything.
Though neither talked directly to the filmmakers, Lay and Skilling are omnipresent characters thanks to archive footage which shows them to be foolishly unbalanced in their optimism - rather like George W Bush over Iraq.
And, just when you thought Arnold Schwarzenegger had retired from movies, up he pops as the Governor of California. On at mac, Mon/Tue.
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