Where have we seen this story before? Real life or TV drama?

Rich guy makes a bad trade and tries to fix it before anyone finds out. Rich guy cheats on his wife and does something stupid. Money fixes everything.

Dont see Arbitrage expecting an insiders take on hedge funds like films such as Wall Street, Margin Call and Too Big To Fail have done to provide a glimpse inside our countrys financial machine.

No, Arbitrage, the break-out feature film for writer/director Nicholas Jarecki, is supposed to show us how good guys can get stuck in bad situations for the right reasons. Call me jaded. Call me cynical. I just never had a lot of empathy for Richard Miller, played by Richard Gere, as the Im doing it all for my family hedge-fund manager. If he wereat least in my bookhe wouldnt have lied to all of them about so many things for so long.

That said, I really enjoyed the movie. The characters were interesting and believable. There were beautiful people in beautiful clothes in beautiful New York settings. Even the storyline was believablejust not the main characters motivation. Still, there were a couple of glimmers of him trying to make it right for the right reasons that did succeed and made me think the rich guy wasnt as heartless and money-grubbing as others of his ilk are often portrayed.

I have two bones to pick, from a content perspective, however.

First, do commodity/derivative markets always have to be the bad guy? I simply dont buy that a billionaire hedge fund manager would have gotten blindsided by variation margin on a copper futures trade. And, I certainly would have expected better from 33-year-old Jarecki, son of FIA Hall-of-Famer and former Mocatta Metals Corp. chairman Dr. Henry Jarecki .

Second, (and I pre-apologize to all the nice people I know at CNBC), does Maria Bartiromo have to have a cameo appearance in every financial-oriented movie in order to make it seem real-to-life?

The best line of the whole movie, though, does put CNBC in its rightful place of being extremely influential. As delivered by the detective on the rich guys heels:

The guy who did it doesnt get to walk just because hes on CNBC.