Karry Best movie of this year hands down!

Stellead Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

filippaberry84 I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Isbel A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

DrNick1 Documentary that doubles as a hagiography of a family of directors of a small Chinatown bank chain as they are brought up on mortgage fraud charges for wholesale fabrication of mortgage banking records sold on to Fannie Mae. They are proposed to be the victims of awful low level employee loan officers who fabricated and extorted the clients whose records they helped fabricate. What it actually shows is a family of shady bank directors who successfully firewalled themselves (take a page from Stevie Cohen!) from criminal guilt. Congratulations. A systemic problem that large wasn't found because they didn't want it found. There's a few words about tax fraud in this film but the subject passes by quickly. Make no mistake though, that is the scam going on here. The default rates on these loans was so low because the applicants actually made much more money and/or had assets that they never paid taxes on. Possibly kept in the Abacus Bank security deposit vaults shown early in the film. The gift note is mentioned prominently in the film, a note where a relative or person connected to the borrower promises a money transfer and this promissory note is then added to the mortgage file. If the makers of this film were really interested in what actually was happening at Abacus, a fascinating thing to do would have been to try and find the authors of these notes. I suspect they wouldn't find many, and that most of these promissory notes were to cover for mortgage applicants pulling their own unreported money out of whatever bolthole they had it shoved into.Was the prosecution and dog and pony show of dragging people in chains worth it? In hindsight, probably not, but that doesn't change the amount of shade going on at Abacus.

rblenheim Steve James is a very famous documentarian who was robbed when his master work "Hoop Dreams" was inexplicably ignored by the Oscars in the Best Documentary Feature category in 1994. His later films included "Stevie", "The Interrupters" and the moving record of Roger Ebert's last days, "Life Itself". And now finally the film that brought James his first nomination for Best Documentary Feature. "Abacus: Small Enough to Jail" is an excellent documentary that centers on the Abacus Federal Savings Bank, a family-owned community bank in Manhattan's Chinatown which became the only bank to actually face criminal charges following the 2007 mortgage crisis - and only because it was deemed not 'too big to fail', an incredible injustice by the U.S. Justice Department merely looking for a scapegoat. But the film is not primarily socio-political; it is, in fact, a 'David vs. Goliath' story of the court battle of the Asian family's defense for their honor against the gigantic U.S. government, and, without shying away from showing the family's internal squabbles and moments of weakness, the film documents the difficult daily sacrifices necessary for them to stand up for their principles. Perhaps some will find this too much a 'standard' documentary, but I feel the story and characters interesting enough not to necessitate a stylistic 'hyping up', and, as is, the film perfectly captures its time and place while keeping us on the edge of our seats until the final verdict. Critic Matt Zoller praised the director for "finding the universal within the specific", and for the film creating a portrait of Chinatown as a thriving community that "defines itself in relation to...American culture... but never entirely comfortable or accepted." It is also an inspiring film of an immigrant family who struggles to survive through a conflict that they know is virtually impossible over which to prevail - but still they find they cannot submit to what they see as an injustice they did not come to America for. This is a film I truly loved. Don't miss it.

wkcranberry This movie is about a community savings bank in NYC servicing the Chinese immigrant community.The Bank had a deposit run in 2003 after news broke that a rogue employee had stolen money from the bank, and that run nearly closed the bank and required millions in expenses to fix. Likely as a result of the losses, the bank needed to find offsetting income and focused on real estate lending and then selling loans made to Fannie Mae. The Bank made good income on such activities beginning in 2009.At most community banks including Abacus, commissions are paid to lower and mid-level loan officers of the bank to find loans which are profitable to the bank when sold, but unfortunately some greedy and unscrupulous or lowly scrupulous loan officers will coach loan applicants on how to game the system to obtain a loan that they do not qualify. At Abacus, rogue loan officers did exactly that by coaching loan applicants how to lie on applications whether by false income or collateral.It is the responsibility of the independent underwriting team at the Bank to check and double check those facts. In this movie, the prosecution tries show that the Bank and senior officers were complicit in making fraudulent loans by not catching the false applications. The trial lasted more than 2 months with witness after witness admitting the information in their application was false though not always with the help of the lower bank officer. So the question was should the bank and higher officers be found guilty of fraud for not catching this. I believe the jury reached the correct verdict, though neither the Sungs nor the DA should be in the clear for noncriminal wrongdoing. The DA for being too ambitious to make a big name for himself and the Sungs for not being more vigilant in their pursuit of the gold. The trial cost the bank and Sungs millions, and as a result the Bank entered a formal agreement with the OCC to improve profitability after losses related to the trial costs. It was interesting that Jill Sung, President did not testify in the trial and that she works in a Chinese bank not being able to speak Chinese. Mrs. Sung was right that banking should have been left to others.

marsanobill Abacus: Small Enough to Jail is a suspenseful David v. Goliath documentary of family loyalty and stubborn courage facing a gigantic government agency and an ego to match. As follows: Tom Sung emigrated from China at 16 and became in time a citizen, a successful lawyer and a resident of upscale Connecticut. Nevertheless he noticed that 'establishment' banks were happy to take his deposits, but when it came to getting a loan, he didn't, as the saying went in the hateful days of the racist Exclusion Act, 'have a Chinaman's chance.' Sung then took a chance and started his own bank—Abacus Federal Savings. His timing was perfect: new immigration laws in the 1960s meant Chinatown soon had a] plenty of customers for Abacus and b] something besides Cantonese restaurants. He was a genuine positive force among the Chinese population, admired and respected by all. Then about a decade ago low-ranking Abacus personnel were caught falsifying mortgage applications; they were immediately sacked and their misdeeds reported to feds, as required. Mistake, as it turned out. The subprime- mortgage crisis was big news: until then, few Americans used the word 'trillion' for anything but the national debt or the distance from here to Alpha Centauri. Villains included Citibank, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and while some were fined, no one went to jail and most bonuses were paid as usual. Unfortunately for Abacus, new-minted New York D.A. Cyrus Vance Jr., who was as hungry for publicity as NY's Sen. Charles Schumer, saw a chance for headlines and photo ops. Seeking a halo as the sole public avenger of the crisis, Vance charged Abacus with 80 counts of criminal wrongdoing, launching a court battle that ran five years and cost $10 million. Although the major villains had got off lightly as being 'too big to fail,' Vance's target was indeed 'small enough to jail': in size, Abacus was 2600th among U.S. banks. About the size, as it turned out, of David. This is an excellent documentary, suspenseful but lightened with some bursts of humor among the Sung family as they fight for the reputations and their principles.