Too much of everything

Great Film overall

Excellent adaptation.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

This documentary had me fuming. The Too Big to Fail Banks got off scot-free, and actually made money from the crisis they created. Meanwhile, a bank catering to a migrant community, who tries to do the right thing gets screwed by an overzealous, politically motivated DA.

This documentary shows you how politically motivated are the justice system. Rather than picking on banks that defrauded American trillions of dollars, they choose to indict a small family bank in Chinatown. T's disgusting when you understand the scope of what the mortgage crisis did to America and not surprising that the only ones prosecuted were Chinese-American.The DAs in this film looks like pompous legal heavy hitter-wannabes tainted by self-righteous vain-glories.

This is a well-constructed documentary. You may even enjoy watching it. But I found it incredibly frustrating because *none* of this ever would've happened if Vera Sung hadn't told one of her bank's customers -- who objected to losing a significant downpayment as a result of one of her employee's actions -- to file a complaint at the *police precinct*.(You can see this scene at about 13:30 in the Frontline version.)By treating this couple as criminal co-conspirators instead of customers, Vera Sung brought this entire thing on her and her family. It's really that simple. And it's unfortunate this fact is completely lost on both the Sungs and the documentarian.Years of litigation and a $10 million defense is perhaps a bit steep of a karma price tag, but not far off.

Abacus: Small Enough to Jail is a suspenseful David v. Goliath documentary of family loyalty and stubborn courage facing a gigantic government agency and an ego to match. As follows: Tom Sung emigrated from China at 16 and became in time a citizen, a successful lawyer and a resident of upscale Connecticut. Nevertheless he noticed that 'establishment' banks were happy to take his deposits, but when it came to getting a loan, he didn't, as the saying went in the hateful days of the racist Exclusion Act, 'have a Chinaman's chance.' Sung then took a chance and started his own bank—Abacus Federal Savings. His timing was perfect: new immigration laws in the 1960s meant Chinatown soon had a] plenty of customers for Abacus and b] something besides Cantonese restaurants. He was a genuine positive force among the Chinese population, admired and respected by all. Then about a decade ago low-ranking Abacus personnel were caught falsifying mortgage applications; they were immediately sacked and their misdeeds reported to feds, as required. Mistake, as it turned out. The subprime- mortgage crisis was big news: until then, few Americans used the word 'trillion' for anything but the national debt or the distance from here to Alpha Centauri. Villains included Citibank, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and while some were fined, no one went to jail and most bonuses were paid as usual. Unfortunately for Abacus, new-minted New York D.A. Cyrus Vance Jr., who was as hungry for publicity as NY's Sen. Charles Schumer, saw a chance for headlines and photo ops. Seeking a halo as the sole public avenger of the crisis, Vance charged Abacus with 80 counts of criminal wrongdoing, launching a court battle that ran five years and cost $10 million. Although the major villains had got off lightly as being 'too big to fail,' Vance's target was indeed 'small enough to jail': in size, Abacus was 2600th among U.S. banks. About the size, as it turned out, of David. This is an excellent documentary, suspenseful but lightened with some bursts of humor among the Sung family as they fight for the reputations and their principles.