I watched "Backstabbing for Beginners" as a dramatic film, not as a documentary. I am surprised and disappointed that so many of the ratings posted here arise from comparisons to real events. As a movie, this does an extraordinarily good job of portraying the naïve character Michael Sullivan, played by Theo James. And for anyone who says that Ben Kingley's presentation as Pasha was too coarse, I can only say that I have worked with people in high positions who swore a lot and made questionable decisions, while always claiming that they only did what was necessary. So many of the comments posted here ignore what should have been the primary consideration of the characterizations in the film -- the dissection of routine work into personal failures that feed off of the exchange of a lot of money.
There are moralality arguments presented in the film that don't seem to get the attention of commenters on IMDB. As the failure of the UN program is dissected we witness the slow unveiling of the common excuse offered by perpetrators that "everybody is doing it" -- meaning stealing -- and the attempted justification that everything done was necessary for the common good. In other words, we were the good guys who need to compromise our judgment in order to complete our assigned tasks. These are critical considerations for any group or agency that claims beneficial motives for its work. In my consideration the appeal of that kind of misjudgment was presented more realistically than I have ever seen in a film. And the characters were all completely credible.
There are moralality arguments presented in the film that don't seem to get the attention of commenters on IMDB. As the failure of the UN program is dissected we witness the slow unveiling of the common excuse offered by perpetrators that "everybody is doing it" -- meaning stealing -- and the attempted justification that everything done was necessary for the common good. In other words, we were the good guys who need to compromise our judgment in order to complete our assigned tasks. These are critical considerations for any group or agency that claims beneficial motives for its work. In my consideration the appeal of that kind of misjudgment was presented more realistically than I have ever seen in a film. And the characters were all completely credible.