Margin Call really works. The intense attention to character and plot incident feels original, more so than Wall Street or The Company Men. Also, two extraordinary performances from Kevin Spacey and Jeremy Irons should guarantee the film’s durability. In writer/director J.C. Chandor, we have someone who could be remembered as one of the great, socially conscious filmmakers.

A week ago, I read Chandor’s screenplay. I expected a twist and there wasn’t one. Margin Call is not about twists. It’s about the human cost created when a big investment bank puts its financial stability ahead of the customers. As CEO John Tuld (Irons) says in the film, “Be first, be smarter or cheat.”

The film begins with the firing of roughly 80% of the workforce inside a Wall Street firm, and how one man stumbles upon an aspect of the market that will change the entire company forever. Fearing a tremendous loss of earnings, the firm decides to “liquidate” its “holdings and several key asset classes,” by selling them off to other, unsuspecting companies. In the broader picture, this is exactly what Lehman Brothers did in 2008, which led to the current financial crisis.

As Sam Rogers, Kevin Spacey proves to be the soul of Margin Call. He sees the disadvantages in deceiving those who work in the market place and earn their living through good trade. His polar opposite here is Jeremy Irons. He’s so relaxed in his duplicitous nature that the film goes to another level whenever he’s on the screen.

Very often exposition or large chunks of explanatory dialogue can hurt a film’s pace. Not so in Margin Call. The material becomes wedded to every shot and every cut, making the ideas feel emotionally resonant without sounding like a cold formula table.

Because Chandor saves the majority of jargon for special moments, the technical details hardly overwhelm the human drama here. This leads to numerous dramatic battlegrounds -- in which one exchange of words between two people becomes pivotal. For instance, the riveting conversation between former employee Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci) and Will Emerson (Paul Bettany) comes across with major authenticity. As the situation becomes untenable, the content of the screenplay rises to another plane.

Apart from its expertly rendered acting credentials, Margin Call boasts a unique, editorial precision. Editor Pete Beaudreau looks for the human qualities in the characters and reveals the spontaneous reactions that result from one decision affecting billions of lives.

There have been a few intriguing market-related pictures, from Rogue Trader and Boiler Room to the excellent documentary Inside Job. And, in my opinion, Margin Call easily takes its place as the most important, thought-provoking and finest film of 2011.

(Released by Lionsgate and rated "R" for language.)