Friday, September 24, 2010
PHOTOS |
COMING SOON|
EXAMINER.COM FILM ARTICLES
||HOME
Friday, September 24, 2010
MOVIE REVIEW
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
Leopards And Their Precarious Spots In The
Land Of Gangster Capitalism
Michael Douglas returns as Gordon Gekko and Shia LaBeouf is Jake Moore in Oliver
Stone's "Wall Street: Money
Never Sleeps".
Twentieth Century Fox
by
Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com
FOLLOW
Friday,
September 24, 2010
Stylish, cool and seductive, Oliver Stone's follow up to his Oscar-winning 1987
film "Wall Street" operates as a prescient cautionary tale, released in theaters
exactly two years and nine days after the 2008 Wall Street stock market crash
that plunged the blue-chip stock index 777 points, punctuating the ongoing
global financial crisis.
Mr. Stone, a filmmaker good at excavating the filthy sinews of human behavior in
his films ("JFK", "Natural Born Killers", "Nixon", "W."), does so again in "Wall
Street: Money Never Sleeps", a much better sequel than one might expect.
The film was supposed to open last April but was held back and opened across the
U.S. today.
Mr. Stone's new film operates as an anthropological thesis on greed, the lizard
brain and human impulse, not necessarily to justify but to instruct today's
young, iPad-occupied generation that history will inevitably repeat itself.
Money is the object. Avarice and the hunger to remain viable is the drug.
Staying in "the game" and the power play, are the keys to longevity
(and infamy).
Gloriously shot by Rodrigo Prieto (the opening credit sequence of languorous
skyscraper shots are scintillating), the film's occasional narrator Jake Moore (Shia
LaBeouf) represents an updated breed of young stock market trader. Fresh,
fearless, ambitious, Jake doesn't take no for an answer. Winnie Gekko
(Carey Mulligan) writes a blog entitled "The Frozen Truth", an underground
muckraking blog of exposé. She tries to push money as far from her rear
view mirror as possible. She and Jake live together in Manhattan's tony
Upper East Side.
The film begins in 2001 with Winnie's father Gordon (Michael Douglas) walking
out of prison after an eight-year stint. "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps"
however, ostensibly focuses on June 2008, three months before financial disaster
hits a Lower Manhattan already struck by a crushing, almighty and fatal blow
seven Septembers prior. As played by Mr. Douglas, Gordon Gekko is now a
silver-haired reformist of sorts, less villainous than victorious, more sage
than saboteur. Mr. Douglas, who reprises his Oscar-winning role (and who
played Steven Taylor, a murderous Wall Street investment banker in "A Perfect
Murder") operates here more as an antihero and aging poster boy of the Reagan
era than anything else.
Mr. Douglas' presence and many of his lines (written by Allan Loeb and Stephen
Schiff) in this new film are poignant, more impactful now because of the actor's
recent disclosure of his throat cancer, as well as for the faded glories of Mr.
Gekko, an 1980s icon and composite of numerous crooks of capitalism. As
you watch Mr. Douglas you can't help but think foremost of Michael Milken, the
Wall Street junk bond trader who served two years of a ten-year prison sentence
in the 1990s and whose prostate cancer is in remission. Mr. Milken has
since spent years speaking out against the corporate titans and criminals and
become a
philanthropist. The comparisons are unmistakable. Yet Gordon
Gekko is a lifer who has grabbed the last life-preserver floating in the sea
having revoking its sale to the poor soul who is about to drown.
"Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" covers a lot of ground in just over two often
highly entertaining hours. There's a smaller, no less important subplot
involving Bretton James (an excellent Josh Brolin), the new king in town and
Jake's hedge fund manager at a notorious investment banking house. The
film recreates a moment at the Federal Reserve Bank in a scene about whether to
keep Keller Zabel, the film's venerable and fictional investment banking house
afloat. (Think: Lehman Brothers.)
One of the many arresting shots in
Oliver Stone's "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps", lensed by Rodrigo Prieto.
This one in particular is a mournful view of the former footprint of the World
Trade Center.
Twentieth Century Fox
This film showcases the scent of power and represents New York City's landscape
so very well. Skyscrapers and those that have fallen seem to be the only
things that can humble the city's nefarious Masters of the Universe. Mr.
Stone has ably captured the scents, sounds and sights of high-class,
high-powered New York, perhaps even better this time around than he did in 1987
in "Wall Street", whose look seemed more dour and damp than the rush
of high, bright energy
that "Money Never Sleeps" possesses.
Mr. Stone (who also directed this summer's documentary "South Of The Border") has taken a
piece of marauding menace and convicted Enron executive Jeffrey Skilling's
after-work vocation: off-road biking, inserting a few of those moments here,
albeit far-less high-risk ones than those shown in
Alex Gibney's riveting documentary "Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room".
Also, Bernie Madoff isn't mentioned directly here, but he's alluded to, and as
"Money Never Sleeps" points out, in context he's hardly the problem.
Pricy attributes -- shots of ladies' earrings, necklaces, rings and high-heels
look very sexy or at least feel like an aphrodisiac. The costume design captures the male wardrobe of choice: wide tie-knots, small
wing-shaped collared shirts, crisp suits. This corporate uniform represents -- if you
will kindly forgive the phrase -- a Cosa Nostra of Wall Street Gangsters:
dressed to kill a billion financial futures.
I personally lived this sexy life for about four years. I worked on a New
York City trading floor in the early 1990s keeping up with the frenetic pace of
trades in emerging markets bond instruments. The adrenaline rush was
there. Stress. High-stakes. Money. Suits. Parties.
Clubs. I wasn't even close to being the Master of The Universe that Tom
Wolfe chronicled in his best-selling book The Bonfire Of The Vanities,
but I felt on top of the world. I did no wrong but I enjoyed the genuine
rewards that hard work, not graft brings. Back then for me, working
15-hour days wearing the suits and suspenders seen in Mr. Stone's original "Wall
Street" was nothing at all. So much of this new film and its predecessor
reminds me of those times and it's funny, coincidental and ironic that the last
name of principal protagonist in Mr. Stone's new film is Moore.
Speaking of which, Mr. LaBeouf has become adept at playing the young protégé to
an older mentor or father ("Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal
Skull"). His energy and eagerness are underlined by a genuine approach to
playing a character in peril and learning fast how to extricate himself from it.
Here, Mr. LaBeouf uses guile and cockiness rather than any physicality, silences
or whiffs of melancholy ("New York, I Love You") to adapt to his situation.
As Jake, he fits well as an impressionable young man who learns fast on the job.
Other standouts include Susan Sarandon, whose Long Island accent is priceless.
She plays a struggling real estate agent and mother of Jake. In a smaller
role as Winnie, Ms. Mulligan hints at the talents she utilized in
"An Education".
For all the emphasis on green that enervates this twisting, floating and
sometimes exhilarating drama, it's shades of gray that dominate. Most, if
not all the characters' dualities and dimensions are on display in ways both
large and small. Everything in this film is about the art of the deal or
the steal. We aren't sure that the characters have really learned
from their exploits and wild carnival rides or if they will succumb to or plot more of
them, but we know their consciences have never slept. One thing is for
sure: humility is far from
view in this rugged, relentless New York City.
With: Eli Wallach and Frank Langella.
"Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps"
is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture
Association Of America for brief strong language and thematic elements. The film's
running time is two hours and 14 minutes.
FOLLOW
SUBSCRIBE TO THE POPCORN REEL MOVIE
REVIEWS RSS FEED
