Such a frustrating disappointment

People are voting emotionally.

Memorable, crazy movie

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I won't talk about life lessons. Money is a risky thing. Big money, earned by putting in a (smaller) big money by making it rotate for your benefit - it's a visible clear risk. Like betting or gambling. So, if there are folks to "put in", there's always a nice guy to "take". Ponzi, of pyramid, or whatever one would call it, is a civilization lifelong issue. You want to believe, go on. OK, enough with moralizing. Acting is very good, oh, it's very-very good. Yes, am an admirer of RDN since God knows when, but the rest of the cast is a cast iron in themselves. Despite goofs etc, it's a tasty thing to watch. Like other tasty things, none of which last forever. Highly enjoyed it. Life's life. P.S.: then, why 8 out of 10?.. to take 2 out for moralizing; in the end, it's a real cost of (any) moralizing. Non, je ne regrette rien.

I don't believe I have ever seen an HBO film before this one but this was a welcome introduction. It was stellar film-making actually, all involved should take a bow and be really proud. The film grips you from its opening scenes and doesn't let go of your attention even after the credits begin to role. Robert De Niro was so good in this, it was like he became Bernie Madoff, in fact the entire cast was so good it was like watching the entire thing unfold in real time. Bravo! And for what it's worth I believe the sons and the wife did not know.

10/23/17. A decent TV movie about the Madoff debacle. This is the side that the public did not know that much about - what happened to the family. De Niro does a fine job as Madoff, a man swallowed by Greed, and Pfeiffer as his long suffering wife, who lost it all as well. Perhaps, a good lesson from all this is - Greed is never good, and that the piper will always get paid in the end.

Controversial actor/producer/director Robert De Niro stars as Bernard L. Madoff in this straight-to-TV drama by popular screenwriter Sam Baum.Beginning in the 1970s, the Madoff crime family rose to power by acquiring huge wealth via their family business: the Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, LLC. Ostensibly a well respected investment firm, it was in fact the world's largest Ponzi scheme.The Madoffs took >$64 billion from gullible clients, promising to invest it wisely, and offering strong returns.Some of this money was spent buying politicians and paying off officials to ensure that America's largely unregulated stock market was allowed to run without government interference. Most of it was spent on the Madoffs' billionaire lifestyle.The Madoffs ran their scam successfully for several decades, despite multiple investigations by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. As the crime family infiltrated industry bodies such as the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, their access to market controls grew exponentially, until there was virtually nothing to stop them exploiting Wall Street in every possible way.As early as 1999, financial analyst Harry Markopolos informed the SEC of the Madoffs' criminal activities, having concluded that the returns they promised clients were impossible to achieve. Authorities ignored him, and continued to do so for the next 10 years.He later wrote an 'I-told-you-so' book, entitled No One Would Listen.Similarly, none of the major Wall Street firms traded with or invested in the Madoff corporation, because they rightly suspected that it was a criminal enterprise.When Bernard was finally caught by the FBI in 2008 he immediately pleaded guilty, and denied any involvement by the rest of the Madoff cartel. Faced with a lengthy and expensive battle to prove the culpability of other family members, federal investigators accepted his plea, and Bernard took the fall for everyone.Bernard settled comfortably into prison life, and boasted of his preferential treatment, and respect among the inmates.I have no sympathy for his victims. They were all rich people, looking to get richer through a scheme they were too greedy to recognise as criminal.For the rest of the crime family, life continued as usual. They retained their wealth, their lifestyle, and most of their assets. Bernard's sons, Mark and Andrew, were separately investigated for tax fraud, but they cheated justice by dying before authorities could settle the case (Mark by suicide, Andrew from mantle cell lymphoma).Mark had allegedly become 'depressed' after his family's crimes were uncovered, and struggled to find employment after the collapse of his father's Ponzi scheme, having never worked a proper job in his life.His CV contained vague, meaningless titles like 'licensed broker', and his entire career had been devoted to the Madoff corporation. Since nobody in the finance industry wanted to hire an unqualified felon from a notorious crime family, Mark took the easy way out and hanged himself with dog leash, leaving behind a wife and child.Sam Baum's version of the story is a softball puff piece, intended to wash away the stench of illegality and rehabilitate the Madoff crime family as much as possible. De Niro portrays Bernard sympathetically, as a good man—well-intentioned, but a little dreamy—who simply got carried away with his own success. A gag-inducing scene shows Madoff's wife reduced to tears when she discovers that her celebrity hairdresser won't serve her anymore because the Madoffs are now known to be criminals. Such are the terrible First World problems of the super-rich. How they must have suffered! The two sons are played as lovable idiots who had no idea what their father was doing with everyone's money, despite being privy to the inner workings of his corporation. Their deaths are accompanied by buckets of crocodile tears that left me cold.I rate The Wizard of Lies at 9.99 on the Haglee Scale, which works out as a pathetic 3/10 on IMDb.