SOME may find it strange that the debut film from one-time real-estate agent JC Chandor, charting the first hours of the Global Financial Crisis, got classified MA without gun-fire, gore, automotive mayhem, punch-ups, time-bombs, drugs, physical brutality or nudity.

“Margin Call” is one of two films opening this week to get MA’d apparently for free use of uninhibited four-letter words that, were I to use them here, might lead the editor at least to use their first and last letters to bracket a series of full stops or, worse, call Centrelink to see if anybody was looking for work reviewing films.

It’s a thriller built around dialogue. A New York banking house downsizes its risk-assessment division. Mid-level manager Eric (Stanley Tucci) has nearly finished an analysis so threatening that, as he leaves the building, he slips a USB stick to the sharpest of his younger colleagues to finish it.

From that point “Margin Call” builds a sense of inexorable calamity. The stable door is open. The nag has bolted. Who allowed that to go un-noticed? How can the firm minimise collateral damage?

A memorable cast (Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons, Paul Bettany, Simon Baker, Demi Moore) plays employees, managers, board members, each with a self-preservation mechanism either over-speeding or arguing with moral issues about how to play it.

“Margin Call” is a beaut thriller, a hard act to follow. JC Chandor’s now preparing a survival film with Robert Redford.

At Greater Union