Customer Reviews
Corporate Complacency - By: Robert Park, 14 Aug 2008 
As an entertaining film this one is as good as any; whether it is re-watchable is doubtful but nonetheless it is good entertainment. Ewan McGregor does the film justice but it was difficult to believein Anna Friel's part as Lisa. It is, of course, a docudramain style.
There is more than one theme weaving its way through this story the main one being the complacency of institutional management closely followed by incompetence of those whose responsibility is to ensure the efficiency of the organisation's operations so it is an expose of the fissures of monolithic management structures. It is the same tale as the story of the 'Million Dollar Bubble' that occurredin the US a few years ago.
The culpability for this disaster & its criminal aspect lay with Leeson's immediate supervisor & the prevailing corporate cultural attitudes & certainly not with Leeson who was used as the 'sacrificial lamb' to placate our sense of justice.
In addition to being a good story it is also a model of human vulnerabilities &in this respect it is well deserving of 5*.
I enjoyed watching the film & recommend it as worthy entertainment & may it be said, educational too.
A quickfire tale of a banking earthquake - By: LXIX, 04 Feb 2008 
Nick Leeson is probably the most infamous bank employee of modern times & Ewan McGregor does a good jobin this dramatisation of how one poorly supervised operative could bankrupt a centuries old financial institution from thousands of miles away (in Singapore).
There are myriads of ordinary people who get into personal debt & then spiralin order to make it up. Leeson though didn't personally profit from his large scale fraud & deception. Instead he was able to exploit faultsin the audit system of his employers while appearing to make them money from the futures markets - until his activities were eventually uncoveredin February 1995.
The film is told from Leeson's point of view (as it's based on his book of the same name which he wrote while doing timein a Singapore jail).
Has the banking system changed to prevent such catastrophes? Ironically, Societe Generale is mentionedin this film as well...
More excuse than expose, but slick enough - By: Trevor Willsmer, 14 Dec 2007 
Rogue Trader is a surprisingly slick & enjoyable number just as long as you can overlook its very distant relation to truth about the downfall of Barings Bankin the wake of massive losses & fraud perpetrated by one of its Singapore traders. There's at least two generations who grew up never realizing that producer David Frost used to a vicious satirist, & this is the movie equivalent of one of his interviews, going along with his subjects' account of events no matter how outrageous the excuses become: here he seems to have blown several million pounds providing a celluloid alibi for a dodgy dealer. Thus Ewan McGregor's Nick Leeson becomes a loveable cockney who only got into this mess to save a bullied colleague's job & to save managements' bonuses without disappointing his wife or the memory of his dear old mum. You keep on expecting him to break out into a chorus of Chim Chiminey or start dancing with animated penguins (he's certainly got the blazer for it). Still, with recent eventsin France the film has aquired a new topicality.
Not much money went into the DVD - just a fullframe transfer & trailer.
Glossy but with no real substance - By: Jay, 06 Jul 2007 A cunning scoundrelin exotic Singapore single-handedly brings down Barings Bank, established two centuries ago & one of England's foremost financial institutions. Another wildly improbable sting flick? Not at all - the story is based on actual events & the film sticks pretty close to the facts. Nick Leeson, brilliant & ambitious young trader, superstar of the Singapore stock market, incurs staggering losses. Unwilling to jeopardize his prospects for advancement, he tries to cover his tracks by pulling non-existent rabbits out of imaginary hats. The literally gut-wrenching stress is illustrated by Leeson's frequent bouts of vomiting (whilein prison, he underwent surgery to remove a tumor along with part of his colon & large intestine, & chemotherapy after being released). The film's flaw is that it glosses over the bank's rolein the disaster. Barings turned a neophyte loosein an foreign arena with total control of the operation & minimal supervision. Putting the same individualin charge of both the front office & back office bypasses the appropriate checks & balances, & is tantamount to having the fox guard the hen-house. The official report of the Bank of England concluded that Barings' failure to segregate Leeson's duties was "reprehensible," & those with "direct executive responsibility for establishing effective controls must bear much of the blame." Yet little mention is made of thisin the film. And the mechanizations of the stock market are downright incomprehensible at times. Nevertheless, this is an interesting story & Ewan McGregor turnsin another outstanding performance.
Don't bother... - By: Bobby Davro, 12 Jun 2007 
I really enjoyed the book so thought I'd give the film a whirl. I wish I hadn't bothered. This film is low-budget, it could have been made by the same people that make the fire safety videos at work. The poor sets, sound & camera work spoiled it for me, which is a shame because it's a great story. Still, nice to see Captain Darling make an appearance.
