Freakonomics was a best-selling primer on Economics written by University of Chicago professor Steven Levitt in collaboration with journalist Stephen Dubner. Together, the talented twosome endeavoured to make an inscrutable subject accessible for the average individual by breaking ghetto demographics and financial transactions down into layman’s terms that even a street hustler could comprehend.
For instance, they exploded the myth of selling drugs as a viable means of making it out of the ghetto by showing that the average dealer’s income is less than minimum wage. A more controversial conclusion arrived at by the authors and propagated by controversial pundits like conservative Bill Bennett was the notion that the U.S. crime rate could be significantly reduced by sterilizing all African-American females.
Now, a film based on this incendiary tome has been brought to the screen by a half-dozen different directors, including Academy Award-winner Alex Gibney (for Taxi to the Dark Side), Oscar-nominees Morgan Spurlock (for Super Size Me), Rachel Grady (for Jesus Camp) and Heidi Ewing (also for Jesus Camp), along with Seth Gordon and Eugene Jarecki. They divvied up the chapters and structured the picture as a discrete series of vignettes recreating the assorted content.
Unfortunately, I have to report that, as is usually the case with adaptations of books, the flick fails to measure up to the source material. However, that bad news is counterbalanced by the fact that it is still likely to be very well received by anyone unfamiliar with the print version.
Among the topics addressed are the aforementioned correlation between black criminality and the abortion rate, as well as such intriguing questions as whether 9th graders can be bribed to get good grades, whether Japanese Sumo wrestling is fixed, whether government incentives work, and how Bernie Madoff, pedophile priests and other disgraced “pillars of the community” managed to mask their crimes for so long.
An iconoclastic expose featuring fresh cultural slants is apt to leave the average armchair economist reevaluating much conventional wisdom they’ve taken for granted.
Very Good (3 stars)
Rated PG-13 for violence, sexuality, nudity, drug use and brief profanity.
In English and Japanese with subtitles.
Running time: 93 Minutes
Distributor: Magnolia Pictures
To see a trailer for Freakonomics, visit:
