The Forecaster

The story of espionage and duplicity that financial adviser Martin Armstrong relates in Marcus Vetter's documentary The Forecaster is as serpentine and fascinating as a John le Carré novel.

An unambiguously partisan profile of controversial economics whiz Martin Armstrong — who spent a decade in jail on technicalities relating to fraud charges — it plays like a slickly elaborate sketch for a future Hollywood retelling in the Wolf of Wall Street mold.

The bigger mystery is whether the models actually work. Though the Armstrong partisans in the film strongly suggest that they do, director Marcus Vetter struggles to convince the lay viewer.

The Forecaster has the distinct hermetic feel of a documentary that employs an echo chamber of people too close to the material.

The Forecaster, a documentary study of the rise and fall of commodities advisor Martin Armstrong, would have paid greater dividends by taking a more impartial approach to its subject.