Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010)

Gordon Gekko is back! Is that good news? Well, from one point of view you may think it so, as Michael Douglas won his actor Oscar playing Gordon Gekko in the original “Wall Street” of 1987. It is rare for an Oscar winning performance to return in a sequel, and the character was very powerful indeed. On the other hand, we know that more and more director Oliver Stone is focusing on the ills of American society, making his movies incisive, but not so much cinematographically entertaining as before. This as well happens here. The movie is a strong attack on the recent worldwide financial crisis, but to portray it, the elements of an appealing movie to an extended audience are neglected. Yet, it does not fail to be a good, insightful and sometimes powerful movie, as Oliver Stone has habituated us, although it is not for all hearts, and certainly less appealing than the original “Wall Street”, whose rise and fall of Gekko and Fox captivated the audience. Here only money talks, and only money captivates. The characters are only on the sidelines. The movie opens with Douglas getting out of prison, but quickly shifts its attention to Shia LaBeouf, a hot young stock broker (as Charlie Sheen was in “Wall Street”, Sheen who actually makes a cameo appearance), who is also engaged to Gekko’s daughter (played by the not beautiful but talented Carrey Mulligan). He is always broken between his quest to make more money, his love for Mulligan, and his “green energy” enterprises, that help depict him as not merely a fortune seeker. He works in a company which collapses, and then shifts to another (who supposedly collapsed the first one, whose CO is the villain of this story, fantastic Josh Brolin). The details of this are a bit technical. Well… too much technical. Half the time I don’t understand a thing of the dialogues. For a financier, a banker, a broker, it’s probably a hell of a first hour and a half of movie, but to the normal viewer… well, you just understand a little enough to get by with the story. This is the kind of detail that may make the movie unappealing. Off course, Gekko, now without money and forgotten, is working in the shadows, in the sidelines, and starts mentoring LaBeouf (just like he knows how!), at the same time as he tries to reunite with the daughter, who is also pregnant. Corporative betrayals, rise and fall of the stock markets, sour deals, financial crisis, fortunes made and lost, are what this movie is all about. Gekko bides his time, and LeBeouf learns the ropes the hard way, until the final twists. Actually, the last sequences of the movie are the best. The technical mambo jambo of the movie is left behind and the human emotions of the man and woman behind the millions (LaBeouf, Douglas, Mulligan, Brolin and also Eli Wallach, still shinning at the age of 95, Susan Surandon, Frank Langella) are able to squeeze through, albeit for a little time only, which is a shame for the picture. All in all, “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” may be a political and socially relevant picture, by the inside knowledge it delivers of the world of high finance, but its high level of technicality is certainly a turn off for the average viewer, who cannot find thrills in the drama. It is a shocker, off course, and an eye opener for the present crisis, but as a motion picture it was taken a little bit too far. The acting is off course superb. LaBeouf is now neck to neck with the big boys and holding its own, Langella found brilliance in his old age (who saw him in “Cutthroat Island” (1995) cannot believe, poor fellow), and Douglas, well, he will not win the Oscar again for playing Gekko, but he can still change from viper to real emotion in a second, and make it believable. Most of all, he has class doing it, although showing some signs of fatigue (maybe his cancer was already bugging him at the time of filming). Even so, the main character of the movie is the money. It influences everything else, and all the sequences are, shall we say, hindered by it. That’s why Oliver Stone made a good movie, depicting a city he knows very well, but too much engulfed in itself and in the intricacy of the system to be thoroughly moving in its drama parts. Socially relevant? Yes. Incisive filmmaking? Yes. But not really that entertaining. Sure enough, that was not the point.