The life of Robert Miller, a well-known and wealthy businessman, who has everything one wants, has been changed completely, when his fraud is about to be revealed and he has to sell everything he has.
As we follow the increasingly frantic Gere down his nightmarish rabbit hole, the picture takes a satisfyingly cold, amoral stance - less critique and more cynical observation.
Arbitrage is not about greed or frustration or police corruption. It's not about family bonds or loyalty or racial discrimination. But all those elements are incorporated into this multi-layered, suspense-laden film.
The screenplay, written by first-time director Nicholas Jarecki, keeps us guessing, which is one of the best compliments one can pay to a movie of this sort.
Like something straight out of 1992, Nicholas Jarecki's debut feature Arbitrage ... is a small scale, high-gloss thriller that feels like Wall Street's cousin.
Does the privilege of powerful men always lead to lust and lies? No. But the phrase 'Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,' is well depicted in 'Arbitrage.'
There are holes in the plot, to be sure, but somehow we don't mind, because for all the unbearable tension of Jarecki's script, the central attraction here is the man in the arena.
