CAPITAL IS FILLED WITH EPIGRAMS
Costa-Gavras scores again with Capital, which features a French bank CEO saying that he is a modern Robin Hood, stealing from the poor to help the rich, to the applause of his bank’s principal shareholders. After Phenix bank CEO Jack Marmande (played by Daniel Mesguich) falls ill, his ghostwriter sidekick Marc Tourneuil (Gad Elmaleh) is named CEO with a lesser salary, a sign that he will be ousted when Marmande dies. Tourneuil professes to be nonchalant about his promotion but soon finds that the game of firing his adversaries and manipulating the largest stockholders is a game that he can play to win. As a perk, he can enjoy sex out of town with a beauty, Nassim (Liya Kebede). Capital seeks to portray contemporary capitalism as crooked, cutthroat, and global with no countervailing governmental regulation that cannot be bought or bribed. The Political Film Society has nominated Capital as best film on the need for democracy of 2013. MH