Reviews
Reuters Review
“This was betrayal on a Shakespearean scale,” said Henriques, who plays herself in the film. “When someone comes forward who has so flagrantly violated the trust of those who loved him, I think we all feel shaken by that.”
Read the full review here.
Huffington Post Review
“Could Robert De Niro top an already amazing career? By Thursday, another brilliant performance premiered at MoMA: As Bernie Madoff in the HBO movie, The Wizard of Lies, he is the consummate con artist.”
Read the full review here.
Orlando Sentinel Review
He and De Niro never sentimentalize Madoff, who talks matter-of-factly about making up investments, then complains that the people he hoodwinked were greedy.
Read the full review here.
Town and Country Magazine on HBO’s Wizard of Lies
“The most interesting thing here,” De Niro says, “is the family dynamic.” Levinson agrees. “You want to know who he was, who she was, and the relationship between them, because if you can humanize them you can better understand,” he says. “If you use the family to show what the man is like, you begin to see how he functions in the outside world. He was a full-time con artist, in private and in public.”
Read the full article here.
W Magazine “Wizard of Lies” Review
Jenny Comita in W Magazine:
“Let me ask you a question,” Madoff says to Henriques, who scored the first jailhouse sit-down with Madoff and plays herself onscreen. “Do you think I’m a sociopath?” Does he really need to ask?
The Baltimore Sun Reviews HBO‘s “The Wizard of Lies”
“From daring direction by Barry Levinson, to De Niro’s mesmerizing performance as disgraced financier Bernie Madoff, “The Wizard of Lies,” is another grand-slam docudrama from TV’s premier cable channel.”
David Zurawik of The Baltimore Sun gave “The Wizard of Lies” on HBO a rave review. Read the full article here.
The New York Times Book Review
“Riveting reading. . . . [Henriques] probably knows more than anyone outside the FBI and the Securities and Exchange Commission about the mechanics of the fraud. As a consequence, in The Wizard of Lies she is able to add significant detail to the story. . . . In the end the story holds us not because of the engrossing details of the scam, but because of the human dimension.”
Financial Times
“Entertaining… Cogent and well researched, The Wizard of Lies is an engaging narrative… [The book] reveals many moments where Madoff might have been stopped. But his investors were too trusting or too greedy to ask the right questions and US regulators were too cowed and too disorganized.”
Read entire review here (PDF).
Bloomberg Businessweek
“Henriques offers an impressive, meticulously reported postmortem not only of the Ponzi scheme but also of Madoff’s entire career. . . . The Wizard of Lies is the definitive book on what Madoff did and how he did it.”
Read entire review here.
Reuters
“(Madoff) is so much like every one of us that failing to recognize this fact will imperil us at every financial turn. This is one of many revelations in Diana Henriques’ stunning new book The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust.”
Read entire review here.