ARBITRAGE

Photos courtesy of Lionsgate

Richard Gere feels the heat while trying to unload his flailing enterprise in the dramatic thriller, ARBITRAGE.

Gere is Robert Miller, a highly successful businessman who has inflated his company’s worth in order to sell the franchise for great value.  From the outside, Robert is a content capitalist with a family and a fortune.  On the inside, he’s a stressed high stakes roller, both professionally and personally.  Not only is Robert under pressure for the sale of his business, but he’s also feeling it from his artist lover who he’s trying to keep secret from his wife, played by Susan Sarandon.

                                                           

 The time doesn’t feel right for a film like ARBITRAGE.  A seedy philander attempts to pawn off his company for more money than its worth, would be ripe for the picking, presuming that audiences we were hoping to see Robert get what he deserves, but writer-director Nicholas Jarecki tackles Robert’s predicament from the opposite end of the spectrum.  

Although not entirely empathetic, Jarecki still tilts ARBITRAGE in Robert’s rooting interests, despite the fact that his actions are morally reprehensible.  Not only are Robert’s business dealings underhanded, but his extra-marital affair now has him caught in the middle of a crime, with Tim Roth’s tenacious detective on his heels. 

Although Jarecki’s screenwriting skills are easily seen through ARBITRAGE, they’d be for naught if it were not for the stellar cast, beginning with Gere.  Gere, who’s career has spanned over three decades, has not been any better than he is in ARBITRAGE.  Gere enables us to see Robert through several prisms, each as compelling as the next, and as viewed  through each light, Robert becomes more complex, rich and oddly sympathetic.  

The rest of the cast is also strong, with Sarandon as his strong, but compromising wife, Roth as an unrelenting officer and Brit Marling, as his daughter who gets caught in the crossfire.

ARBITRAGE is a unique and engaging thriller, not because its something new, but rather because of the angle we’re viewing it.

Grade: B+