American Casino 3/4

(Argot Pictures, Unrated)

We don’t hear much from politicians or the media about how the trillions in taxpayer money shoved into pockets of Wall Street—to allegedly rescue the economy—are going to rescue victims of those suspect financial tycoons.

The documentary American Casino, while not sufficiently clarifying that massive stock market con game, does magnificently humanize the grim but generic statistics to expose the horrific crimes against its individual foreclosure victims. Yes, these millions of people robbed of their dignity and very survival have names and feelings, if not homes.

Directed by Leslie Cockburn, American Casino focuses initially on the major stock-market players in this massive deregulated home-lending scheme, but assumes a neutral perspective where a more critical interrogation is called for. So it’s difficult to tell if these talking-head financial operatives simply can’t express themselves other than in mystifying money jargon, or if their words are being used more cunningly, to couch unrevealed crimes.

But essentially the gist—if one is willing to pay enough attention to what is being said—seems to be that Wall Street bankers took extreme advantage of the deregulated market under Bush, and proceeded to dispense mortgages indiscriminately to home buyers they knew couldn’t afford the payments, especially people of color in the inner city with dreams of owning their own homes. And they then dumped these risky “products” as pricey bonds to similarly hoodwinked loan companies who would ruthlessly squeeze the homeowners into foreclosure, in order to profit off the sale of the abandoned properties. But the economy was subsequently left in such tatters that nobody was buying.

When American Casino provokes its most horrific impact, and where the filmmaker seems most focused and activated, is an excursion to the scene of the actual crime, merely one of countless many, in Baltimore. Here, endless blocks of boarded-up homes stretch out along the city streets; foreclosure counselors and advocates are helplessly mystified by deliberately incomprehensible lender contracts that seem to be revised and the stakes cruelly raised every time the homeowner comes in sight of just catching up with payments; a therapist who cares for the neighborhood’s stress-impaired foreclosure victims driven into mental illness is herself threatened with eviction; and a local church minister is forced out of her childhood home and now lives in a car.

Even with the limited understanding of this enormous crisis provided by American Casino, the indictment of those who perpetrated this massive scheme against the US population—now being made an offer it can’t refuse to bail out the criminals to the tune of trillions—cannot be avoided in this exceptional exposé. Additionally, these scenes of brutal legalized home invasion are infused with the raw street eloquence of infuriated foreclosure rap rhythms that drive home the message, if not the meaning of it all.