Friday, September 24, 2010 at 7:00AM Movie Review - 'Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps'
| Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
Starring Michael Douglas, Shia LaBeouf, Carey Mulligan, Josh Brolin  |
The original Wall Street is one of those movies that's not only a classic of its time, it also transcends its era to become a time capsule of a specific period in history. Released in 1987, Oliver Stone's treatise on greed in Reagan's America could have been viewed as a harbinger of things to come, and Michael Douglas's portrayal of Gordon Gekko is one of the iconic performances of a decade that was full of—if nothing else—iconic characters. His "Greed is good" speech isn't just an instant classic of a monologue, it quickly became part of the general parlance, and remains there to this day.
But then Gekko got caught, his protégé Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) sold him out, and he went to jail for insider trading. That greed-fueled ride came screeching to a halt. Now, after serving his time, Gordon has finally been released, and it turns out he has a daughter named Winnie (Carey Mulligan). She has sort of an Elektra complex: though she no longer speaks to her father, she dates a younger version of him. Jake Moore (Shia LaBeouf) is already a Wall Street hot-shot of the 21st century when we meet him in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. He's got tons of money, lives in a Manhattan condo with a view, loans his mom (Susan Sarandon) hundreds of thousands of dollars, and zips around on his motorcycle while making deals. It's 2008, and the bubble is as big as it's gonna get, and Jake and everybody else can't imagine life doing anything but just continuing to get better.
We learn, though, that there's a big conference room at the Fed where big decisions are made. The heads of the biggest investment firms come here to meet with Treasury representatives and plan out our country's financial future. Jake's boss and mentor (Frank Langella) goes to ask for a bail out, but his rival, Bretton James (Josh Brolin) wants to see him fail. This feels like a peek behind the curtain at how such conversations go, but something tells me that Oliver Stone is over-dramatizing things quite a bit, as well as giving us the heavily-abridged version.
Whereas Wall Street came as a predictor of the future, Money Never Sleeps is more a document of what's happened over the past couple of years. From the perch of his jail cell, Gordon Gekko was able to see where things were heading. Douglas gets to give more speeches, none quite as good as his earlier diatribe, but they still help to remind us of what a knowledgeable and savvy guy Gekko is. Jake goes to meet his finance's father and ends up exchanging favors with him. But Jake isn't Bud Fox. He already knows what he's doing and doesn't need to be taught the ropes of Wall Street; on the other hand, he's still a 20-something who hasn't quite yet learned all of the ways to screw people over. Luckily he's surrounded himself with people who can help him out with that.
Stone throws all of this at you and more, in a pretty rapid-fire fashion. Screenwriters Allan Loeb and Stephen Schiff have peppered fast and slick dialogue throughout the entire movie, and Stone takes it from there. Many scenes are cut together like they were edited by someone who just bought a new Mac and discovered that it comes with iMovie. There's a lot of frenetic wipes, split screens, cross-dissolves in the middle of lines of dialogue, inserts of floating heads obscuring other heads. Thankfully, there are some tasteful stylistic touches, too, the cleverest example being when Stone superimposes a graph of the Dow Jones average on the New York City skyline.
Over-the-top is Oliver Stone's favorite method of movie-making these days, though. He inserts cheesy-looking animations to explain some of the energy breakthroughs Jake is trying to invest in, and at times tries a little too hard to force symbolism into his story (near the beginning, we see kids blowing large bubbles in Central Park, and the camera lingers on them as they float into the air). Most of the movie feels like a glossing-over of the story that's being told, with some catch-phrases shoehorned in to nudge things in the direction they're supposed to go. "Money never sleeps" was a line from the first film, but here it must be repeated as if the subtitle needed additional justification (this time it's "money is the bitch that never sleeps"). And of course we must be told of firms that are "too big to fail".
Luckily, the cast is great, and they keep the movie from going off the rails. Douglas is as expected—which is to say, just as good as he was in the original film—and Josh Brolin does a great job with a modern-day interpretation of the same kind of character. The two contrast and complement each other throughout the film. Shia LaBeouf proves that he's a legitimate lead actor, and Carey Mulligan shows that she's ready for whatever Hollywood wants to put her in—this is her first big role since the world got to know her in An Education, and she doesn't disappoint. Eli Wallach gets to have the most fun, though, even if his small role is a bit too much.
I can't remember the last movie I saw that had a "songs by" credit, but that's the case here, with David Byrne and Brian Eno providing music that feels 80s enough to be nostalgic, yet not so much as to take you out of the modern-day setting. It's fun to catch up on a character like Gordon Gekko after 20-plus years, and there's enough drama and new additions to Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps to ensure that we don't tire of the reunion.
Reader Comments (3)
Colin would of given this a one or a two!
...
I'm just kidding, maybe we can avoid all that talk this week.
I did not know the greed is good speech, so I went and grabbed it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7upG01-XWbY
Dude, I know! Colin totally would've only given this 1 ape. 2 tops.
I guess I'm Johnny come lately to the Colin stepping down news.
Dammit. No offense to the new folks here but, Colin's reviews and opinion's had built up a lot of capital with me over time. I'm going to miss being able to take the ratings here to the bank.
"You Maniacs! You blew it up!!"
Sorry, couldn't resist the reference.... ;)