Agreed. If you already know some of the technical history it's pretty obvious what's going on, but it still gets some subtle drama out of it. But I imagine it could be a little opaque if you don't understand the background.
What I thought was interesting was how the movie compressed the events of the crash down to a single day at a single firm.
> (Quant: an MIT/CalTech type who would normally be building rockets or bridges, but currently analyzing risk on Wall St.)
This is perfectly realistic. I've known of a number of ocean/atmospheric scientists who made this jump. I also once had a housemate who had a PhD in quantum physics (he still did it on the side for fun) but became a quant when the job market for pure physics research dried up. So keep your scientists well-funded, and nobody gets hurt! :-)
-- Andy