BUSINESS ETHICS – directed by Nick Wernham, written by Richard Wernham – SPOILERS

The story begins in a lecture hall where Professor Wrightway (Lance Reddick) is holding forth on the topic of ethics, and one of his students, Zachery Cranston (Larenz Tate), raises a question.

WRIGHTWAY: “Dishonesty, lies, cheating. You will never get away with them. They will always come back to haunt you, and you will pay the price.”
CRANSTON: “The price that has to be paid, I was thinking, Professor Wrightway, like everything else, shouldn’t we ask if it’s worth paying? I’m not talking about small-time thievery. We’re business students here. I’m talking about something really big, where you steal or cheat people out of a lot of money.”

Wilfred Tempest (Julian De Zotti), raises his hand and responds: “Two words, sir. Charles Ponzi.”

Zachery Cranston‘s mother owned a candy store, and when Zachery was young she became involved with an investment advisor named Edwin Murk (Gil Bellows), who tried to teach the boy to tell good from bad. (“Good,” Murk said and pointed to his Rolex. “Bad,” Murk said, pointing to Zachery’s cheap watch.) Despite the obsolescent examples (watches and the gold standard), Zachery is inspired by Murk’s materialism.

Trying to do things the right way, Zachery works his way up to Senior Portfolio Manager at Mr. Murk’s investment firm, but when Murk is arrested for financial irregularities, the firm goes bust, and Zachery is effectively blacklisted by the industry. He tries setting up his own business but after a short while his only client, a man who specializes in unsavoury business activities, threatens to take his money elsewhere unless Zachery gets better results. Mr. Murk, whose legal troubles are ongoing, advises his stepson to adopt a more aggressive approach, and it takes only a short while for Zachery to consider the methods of Mr. Ponzi.

Zachery hires drunken accountant Martin Abacus (Julian Richings), unemployed compliance officer (and former classmate) Wilfred Tempest (whose wife needs medication the couple cannot afford), and Veronica (Sarah Carter), a receptionist who knows absolutely nothing about hedge funds. Together, the four of them embark on an ambitious scheme that would make Ponzi (or Madoff) envious. Such a scheme works beautifully so long as all the investors remain content, but it does not adapt well. Zachery’s hedge fund serves as a metaphor for unregulated capitalism. Its failures are systemic, and its successes are accidental.

The first thing Veronica does after Zachery hires her is to decorate her desk with a purple plushie. That plushie casts a long shadow.

In the movie’s best scene, Swiss banker Fraulein Stumpf (Shauna MacDonald), insists on meeting Zachery’s new accountant Carmine Tucci (Paolo Mancini). Stumpf, whose name literally means “blunt”, is unimpressed with Tucci’s casual appearance, and asks why Zachery would hire him instead of a major accounting firm.

TUCCI: “You know, I never understood why anyone would hire those big firms. You pay through the nose and a bunch of kids do all the work while the fat cat partners are out playing golf. With me, what you see is what you get.”
STUMPF: “Precisely. And what I see is not exactly someone who wrote the textbook on modern accounting.”

In a blaze of serendipity (and much to Zachery’s surprise), Tucci reaches behind him and pulls out a textbook called “Tucci on Modern Accounting”.

Tate described his character (Zachery) to bossip.com: “The character that I play is not some small-time nickel and dime cat on the street corner hustling people in a card game. He’s going to real live people who got the money – people who have ancillary cash; wealthy people who are liquid; people who, in his mind, are doing absurd things with their money….Some of these wealthy people are so disconnected. You always wonder if you had their money what you would do with it but how do you get to their money? He uses his intellect. He uses his wisdom. He uses his charisma and, that alone, attracted me to the character.”

What eventually takes down Zachery’s operation is not his lack of knowledge of the details (as illustrated by his surprised reaction to Tucci’s textbook). Neither is it the accumulated weight of his deceptions. Zachery is a salesman, and one would think he would understand (perhaps more than most others) that value is a relative thing. He does not.

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BUSINESS ETHICS is available from most VOD outlets.