Dirty Money

 

Big Frank watched three episodes of "Dirty Money"  last night. It's s a Netflix original television series that focuses on corporate corruption, securities fraud and other tales on acquiring and moving dirty money. Its producer is Alex Gibney, a pro at this type of documentary having done some 48 in total. Gibney approaches documentary in the expository style like Ken Burns- eliciting testimony from subjects along with voice-over narration.

The series includes two years of programming that came out in 2018 and 2020. Each season has 8 episodes of one hour each. The first year focusses on such areas as the Volkswagon emissions scandal, payday loans, Donald Trump/confidence man, and then in the second season Wells Fargo's fraudulent banking practices, Prime Minister Najib Razak theft of Malaysian funds, slumlord Jared Kusher and more.

"Dirty Money” shows us plenty of crooks, but also shows how it is all too often the systems or lack thereof that allow those people to thrive. The price we pay is huge in terms of the millions of people impacted along with the environmental degradation. This is a current that runs through all the episodes and ties it together as firmly as the corruption.

Big Frank's one reservation about packing so much corruption on one series of films that many, like Big Frank, binge watch, is that en masse it leaves the viewer feeling helpless to oppose such corruption displayed on such a massive scale.