As a boy, Hank Paulson was sent to shovel out the stables at the family farm. Half a century or so later, he found himself up to his tie clip in doo-doo as presiding Treasury Secretary while the economy turned to a world of stink.
The doc “Hank: 5 Years from the Brink” is essentially a long, friendly interview with the likeable Paulson (a former Goldman Sachs honcho) and his wife Wendy, interspersed with stock footage and those scary zigzagging lines indicating trillions of net worth destroyed in the 2008 meltdown.
Directed by Joe Berlinger (“Paradise Lost”), the film is unwise to stick to one, unrebutted subject: The effect is like straining an ocean through a coffee filter as Paulson defends bailout decisions that caused considerable consternation (but now are mostly agreed to have been the correct ones). Paulson’s reflections on his personal life are often disarming, and I happen to agree with the film’s premise, but it makes for monotonous cinema to stick with one talking head for so long. Berlinger’s nonstop cheesy thriller score is a nuisance and the financial crisis is too complicated to reduce to a documentary aimed at general audiences. Still, this is a useful primer on what went wrong — and right — in 2008.