'Chasing Madoff' frantically lays out its case

Unrated (adult themes); 91 min.

In the tacky, garish documentary Chasing Madoff, writer-director-producer Jeff Prosserman recounts the efforts by three Boston investment bankers -- particularly Harry Markopolos, whose book No One Would Listen served as the basis for the film -- to blow the whistle on corrupt investment banker Bernie Madoff.

Madoff, who pleaded guilty in March 2009 to 11 federal charges of using billions of dollars invested by his clients to fund a massive Ponzi scheme, is serving a 150-year prison sentence. But for nearly a decade before Madoff's arrest, Markopolos and his two business associates were doing everything they could think of to get someone -- the government, the news media, anybody -- to pay attention to the flagrant corruption pulled off by Madoff and his business.

Using incredibly irritating, rapid-fire editing, CGI graphics and sometimes ridiculous re-enactments, Prosserman lets Markopolos do the bulk of the talking -- and the guy has no trouble filling up the time. Markopolos lays out the nature of Madoff's scheme in accessible layman's terms, and he explains how he and his partners repeatedly lobbied the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to pay attention to their allegations for nearly a decade, but they could never earn a response.

The story is a fascinating one, but Prosserman doesn't trust it to carry the film. Chasing Madoff is as much a journalistic exposé of Madoff as it is a love letter to Markopolos, shot in the style of Natural Born Killers by a director terrified of boring his audience. In Prosserman, the documentary genre finds its own Michael Bay.

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-- Rene Rodriguez,

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