You may have missed Madoff on ABC this week. It’s four hours on the life of the fraudster, portrayed by Richard Dreyfuss. If you have a few hours this weekend, it’s worth watching.
Mr. Dreyfuss does a great job portraying Madoff, capturing him lying, cheating and stealing, but looking upstanding in the eyes of his investors. A con man in a fancy office. He nails it.
Blythe Danner is even better as Ruth Madoff, enjoying the luxuries of life and clueless about her husband’s deception. Then she is torn when her sons make her choose between them and Bernie.
Frank Whaley is over the top as Harry Markopolos. He is portrayed with an extra bit of lunacy spewing out indecipherable phrases to the SEC about uncovering Madoff’s fraud.
I didn’t like how the movie painted a stark line between the legitimate Madoff brokerage and the fraud in the management side. The main trading floor is full of rich furniture and decoration. The fraud center on the 17th floor is a smoke-filled, windowless den of iniquity. Why are there no windows? (There were windows.) Michael Rispoli, as Frank DiPascali, is straight out of the Sopranos. The rest of the fraud crew are poorly dressed and unkempt, while the trading floor remains beautiful.
The show also fails to show much of the greed of the feeder funds who were happy to take big management fees while Madoff was content to live off the brokerage fees. There is one pair of fund managers who nearly jump with joy when they find out the arrangement.
The movie also fails to add the color that many investors thought Madoff was cheating. But they thought he was front-running trades in the brokerage. That group of investors was happy to have their money with a cheater, as long as he was cheating someone else and not them.