Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps Movie Review (4/5)
Review by cinema autopsy
Michael Douglas’s Gordon Gekko character from Oliver Stone’s 1987 film Wall Street embodied capitalism at its worst. Gekko was a corporate raider whose desire to generate wealth for its own sake eclipsed any sense of moral or legal accountability. However, Wall Street reportedly had the bizarre counter effect of actually inspiring people, who were turned on by the idea that greed is good, to become stockbrokers. If stockbrokers today really have modelled themselves on Gekko then is it any wonder that the resulting financial culture of unsustainable lending and speculation led to the 2008 market crash? With this in mind it makes perfect sense for Stone to resurrect the Gekko character in order to explore the events leading up to, and the outcomes of, the Global Financial Crisis.
Gekko for the most part is not the focus of the film but a strange spectre who lurks in the background of the narrative as part mythical legend, part fallen angel and part broken man. Since the first film he has spent eight years in prison, lost his family and lost his wealth. Nevertheless, he is still something of a hero to a new generation, including Jake Moore (Shia LaBeouf) an already highly successful proprietary trader who is living with Gekko’s estranged daughter Winnie (Carey Mulligan). Jake is attempting to make his fortune from investing in green energy, which is the next major boom market. Young, confident and hungry for success Jake is a gentler version of the type of characters from the original film and somewhat of an idealist, despite what he tells himself.
Review by film
The fact of the matter is that greed is good. Greed is the thing that keeps you working on your craft an hour longer, the drive that puts you in the gym that extra day a week, the inkling that perhaps your impossible idea is doable with a little elbow grease. There’s a pretty good evolutionary reason for greed. “Getting by” is not the way to make improvements, and greed, when infused with a healthy amount of motivation and social conscience, can lead to tremendous good. But unchecked greed? It’s a nightmare, the Achilles’ heel of our financial system. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is about both types of greed, all kinds of people, and the truth of our current economy.
The shocking part of Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is that it might just be the thing that makes people sit up and take note of the calamity unleashed by a few greedy folks with unlimited influence and little in the way of a moral hazard. Reams of literature certainly haven’t made a dent. Goldman Sachs’ fellas calmly explaining how they gamed the system didn’t seem to have an impact. So we’re left with Oliver Stone, a gifted director to be sure, but not the guy I would have picked out as the canary in the coal mine two years ago.
Review by Boxofficemagazine
With the woes of Wall Street constantly in the headlines, Oliver Stone could not have picked a better time to reignite Wall Street. The 1987 original starred Charlie Sheen (who has an amusing cameo in this version) as the hotshot protégé of Michael Douglas in his Oscar winning turn as the slippery and shrewd stock wizard, Gordon Gekko. In this revamp, Gekko turns up harried and grayer but still hunting for a way back into the “game” after serving eight years in prison for his bad trading habits. He’s now gotten involved with another young hotshot (Shia LaBeouf), who happens to be engaged to Gekko’s estranged daughter. Combining a strong family story with Stone’s precise and knowledgeable insights about the way the finance industry works-or doesn’t work, as the case may be-this 2010 update is worth its weight in gold futures and should help 20th Century Fox’s stock rise when it’s released on September 23rd, a full 4 months after this week’s splashy debut as an out of competition entry at the Cannes Film Festival. Box office should be brisk and prospects assured on DVD, where this crafty follow-up will be essential back-to-back viewing with the original to see how far we haven’t really come.
Much like Martin Scorsese’s The Color of Money (1986), which updated Paul Newman’s Fast Eddie Felson character from the 1961 film The Hustler, Stone and his screenwriters Allan Loeb and Stephen Schiff are skillfully using the long period between original and sequel to allow the “reformed” veteran to show the ropes to the eager young player before letting that old itch to be back in the “game” take over.
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