Bull Run (2025) Movie Review: A Derivative and Vapid Financial Comedy that Suffers From a Heavy Dose of Adam McKay Hangover

Tom Blyth-led film “Bull Run” (Original title: Discussion Materials) belongs to a bygone era when the mainstream landscape was filled with stories about hustle culture. Back then, shows like “Suits” made professional success seem like the only worthy aspiration, especially to men. Of course, there were hipster-centered projects that were talking about the capitalistic outcasts, but they also had major flaws. These projects, whether directly or unwittingly, propagated sexist proclivities, making emotional intelligence seem like a folly. In the last few years, podcasts and online videos have taken over the baton of similar discussions between men, primarily about their obsessions with tech, fitness, and finance. They turned the noble topics of self-improvement into tools to project their self-obsession.

“Bull Run” follows similar characters in the financial sector who are unapologetically crude. Writer-director Alfredo Barrios Jr. presents their lives through the eyes of Bobby Sanders (Tom Blyth), a junior investment banker with big ambitions. That’s why his colleagues feel like heightened caricatures, filtered through his gaze. The director uses Blyth’s voice-over to express Sanders’s joys and frustrations with their blatant opportunism. He uses their traits as tools for his farce, with a narrative style eerily similar to Adam McKay’s “The Big Short.”

We see Blyth breaking the fourth wall to talk about his colleagues’ daily routines. The director also adds bits of archival photos and videos in between his scenes. The intention is to mock its characters for their greed. However, unlike McKay, he doesn’t say anything clever or substantial through those brief transitions. So, we are left with spending a while with a group of professional clowns with occasionally smart financial insights. They judge each other based on their social backgrounds to place them in the professional hierarchy.

Bull Run (2025) — A still from “Bull Run” (2025)

The script uses stereotypes that were left in the past for a reason. It’s odd to see a 2025 movie introducing a bizarre Indian accent popularized in American media, even if it’s rarely how Indians or Indian-Americans speak in reality. A common argument in such cases is that these jokes are there simply to critique Americans’ ignorance about anything outside of their borders or to portray their privileged position. After all, Blyth’s character does mention that the Indian professional he consults is competent to run their office, and could have done so if he were born in the States.

The moment strikes similar to Ryan Gosling’s character from “The Big Short,” when he is speaking about his Asian colleague being good with numbers because the Asian diaspora is known for similar academic achievers. Yet, the next moment is offered to that colleague, exposing the Americans’ idiocy. That doesn’t happen even once throughout “Bull Run.” So, instead of a potent satire about the inner workings of investment banking, it becomes a cheap comedy with a farcical tone that reintroduces troubling cliches about race and gender.

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The point of McKay’s approach was not simply to make fun of these cliches. He wanted humor as a way to simplify financial jargon, which may seem dauntingly inaccessible otherwise. So, a cutaway to Anthony Bourdain in a kitchen or Margot Robbie in a bathtub speaking about these topics in McKay’s film makes the entire explanation easily digestible and entertaining. “Bull Run” does not have a strong reason behind including these frustrating cliches.

The Middle Eastern colleague, Farouq (Ashwin Gore), becomes the butt of everyone’s jokes simply for his accent, since the script does not have anything clever to say about the nepotism that brought him, a spoiled brat, to this office. Michelle (Jordyn Denning) remains simply the subject of Sanders’ desires, even if her professional goals could have offered more depth to her character.

Chris Diamantopoulos stars as another ruthless finance-sector man. In this case, the actor is at least predictably reliable with his comic delivery, without sacrificing an understanding of his role within the film’s world. However, Tom Blyth does not get enough material to work with, leaving us nowhere close to understanding this smart-guy-with-unrecognized-talent character as the protagonist.

The script fails to offer any strong reason to care about Sanders besides the usual tropes of corporate culture dramas. We see him working with opportunists under a ruthless boss who would cut any of them from the payroll if they dared to spread their wings. Besides that, we learn hardly anything that can inform us further about his psyche. The issue also lies in the movie’s tone. It isn’t an out-and-out denouement of this cutthroat world like HBO’s Industry, nor is it a slick — if clichéd — take like Suits. The script occasionally mocks the finance world trends and their mechanics, including its creepy obsession with Eastern spirituality, but it doesn’t make it particularly clever or exciting.

Blyth ends up playing only a plot device with next to no emotional depth. So, “Bull Run” feels like the work of someone badly trying to make a bonkers, self-referential comedy like “The Wolf of Wall Street,” but to no avail. The film focuses on an entertaining portrayal of excess but does not deliver a biting critique of the abuse of power for wealth creation. Instead, we get a movie that fills every moment with background music, perhaps afraid to lose us with its performances or an inept script. It all leaves us with a frustrating experience, making us want to read Bill Keenan’s source novel instead, to feel more connected to this young character’s initial year/s in the financial world.