Following the Saturday night world premiere of writer-director Nicholas Jarecki's Arbitrage, Richard Gere is garnering major buzz for his role as an amoral hedge fund trader. The thriller, which co-stars Tim Roth and Susan Sarandon, centers on Robert Miller (Gere), an American man who is in many ways a symbol of American patriarchy. He is white, wildly wealthy, and not to be toyed with. He is a master of the market and of arbitrage—the art of successfully buying low and selling high—and of course, he has a way with the ladies. But like many powerful men before him, Miller's path to wealth is paved with fraud. While he attempts to cover his tracks, things go from bad to much worse when he finds literal blood on his hands, and a whole new crime to cover up.

In this clip, courtesy of Deadline, Miller is forced to reconnect with shady character from his past, portrayed by Nate Parker of Spike Lee's Sundance offering Red Hook Summer.



A second clip, which can be viewed in our player below, features Brit Marling, who drew notice at Sundance in 2011 for her charming work in Another Earth. Here, the silver-haired fox lays down the law, explaining to his beautiful, young employee exactly where she falls in the pecking order.



While it may seem too soon to talk Oscars 2013, Gere's fearsome embrace of his Bernie Madoff-inspired character is already inspiring some critics to insist an Academy Award is in his future. Moviefone asserts this kind of buzz is sure to score Arbitrage distribution in short order, which seems a sound bet.