Maxed Out

The documentary is about how living on debt became normal in America. The customers credit card companies profit most from are not the ones who clear their balance but the ones who barely make the minimum payment. The film goes inside that system: collection agencies, the people handing out cards on university campuses, families who lost their houses to debt, and the families of young people who lost their lives to it. James Scurlock's film came out in 2006, two years before the mortgage crisis broke, and from here you can see how close it already was. The telling does not only blame the companies; it shows the share held by the regulators, by politics and by advertising. Some of the interviews are funny and some are unbearable. The question the film asks is a simple one: who needs all this debt, and who is making money from it.