Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room

Is there anything more satisfying than seeing big-time bandits get caught with their hands in the Wall Street cookie jar? In this documentary by Alex Gibney (The Trials of Henry Kissinger), based on the book of the same name by Bethany McLain and Peter Elkind, the biggest financial scandal of the decade is digested into a marvelously entertaining package—it's like Fahrenheit 9/11 without Michael Moore's "look at me" snarkiness. Enron's fall hit home for many Americans: The company's crash helped burst a helium bubble on the stock market and stole the pensions of thousands of innocent workers. In California, Enron masterminded power blackouts and made billions from the fake energy crises.

But how did Enron do it? The company's boss, Kenneth Lay ("Kenny Boy" to his pals in the Bush family), exploited government regulations; his managers, including CEO Jeff Skilling, were an ultramacho bunch who boasted of going on motocross races and white-water–rafting trips. Using presto-chango accounting practices to hide billions of dollars of debt, Enron executives gleefully announced pipe-dream projects to pump up their stock prices: an ill-fated broadband movie download deal; power plants for nations too impoverished to pay for them; even speculation on the weather.

What's tragic, though, are the interviews with now-broke employees whose life savings are gone. (The suicide note of a top exec is a sad reminder of the human cost of the scandal.) Who will pay for all this graft? You and me.—Justine Elias