IN THE SERVICE OF TRUTH AND BEAUty, mankind has attempted many seemingly impossible tasks down through the ages. Michelangelo transformed a bare ceiling into one of the most beautiful paintings in the world. Pablo Picasso fashioned a stunning work of art out of a pair of abandoned bicycle handlebars, and Marcel Duchamp achieved similar wonders with a cast-off urinal. Now the folks at Home Box Office have topped them all by making a reasonably watchable movie out of a book about a leveraged buyout: Barbarians at the Gate, which will receive its first showing on HBO this Saturday.
It helped that...