Chasing Madoff 2010

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: Jeff Prosserman's riveting doc takes a question that haunted the Bernie Madoff scandal - how did he fool everyone for so long? - and answers it with a decisive ''He didn't.'' Read more

Walter V. Addiego, San Francisco Chronicle: If you're wondering why so many people are cynical about Wall Street, the government and the system in general, "Chasing Madoff" tells you. Read more

Daniel M. Gold, New York Times: Frustratingly uneven in its presentation. Read more

Tom Keogh, Seattle Times: Prosserman wisely skirts the esoterica of high finance, though he cleverly uses good visual devices to suggest the shocking scope of Madoff's crimes. Read more

Wesley Morris, Boston Globe: The director is Jeff Prosserman, and he appears to be auditioning for some other movie. Read more

Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times: A missed opportunity as both informative reportage on a globally devastating deception and an objective portrait of a difficult man's lonely mission of truth. Read more

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: The story is a fascinating one, but Proserman doesn't trust it to carry the film. Read more

David Denby, New Yorker: The hero has a colorless, off-rhythm voice, dead eyes, disorderly hair. He's not, we gather, an imaginative man, but, a religious Greek Orthodox and a former Army officer, he's propelled by a strong sense of rectitude, an ethos of duty. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: The film never proves that Madoff was in league with mobsters. It doesn't even detail a single threat against Markopolos, his family or his friends. Read more

Ella Taylor, NPR: All this paranoid flim-flam drains energy away from the staggering, if far less cinematic, fact that Markopolos was ignored, not targeted. Read more

Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News: Unfortunately, director Jeff Prosserman tries to turn this inherently fascinating tale into the world's most cliched film noir, complete with shadowy re-enactments, painfully literal symbolism, and absurdly ominous score. Read more

Lou Lumenick, New York Post: Jazzes up its talking heads with some of the cheesiest re-creations this side of E!'s "Hollywood True Story." Read more

Tirdad Derakhshani, Philadelphia Inquirer: Viewers get very little about Madoff himself. While the film is primarily about Markopolos, it makes little sense without much insight into his nemesis. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: "Chasing Madoff" is not a very good documentary, but it's a very devastating one. Read more

Calvin Wilson, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: The film may leave some viewers even more confused about the Madoff affair than they were in the first place. Read more

Rick Groen, Globe and Mail: Chasing Madoff offers an object lesson in how to turn a potentially rich documentary into a cheap bag of melodramatic tricks. Read more

Linda Barnard, Toronto Star: A story as compelling as any detective yarn with an arrogant bad guy who could have come right from Hollywood and a real-life hero on his tail. Read more

John Anderson, Variety: The human element of the film is so weirdly distracting it often deflects from its primary target. Read more

Andrew Schenker, Village Voice: Jeff Prosserman's film paints an arresting portrait of financial corruption so widespread that it infiltrates vast international networks, governmental regulatory bodies, and the U.S. media. Read more