Gordon Gekko has recently been released from prison after serving a long sentence for white collar crimes that occurred in 1987's Wall Street. No one is there to meet him coming out of jail. He has basically become irrelevant in the new century. Several years later, Gekko writes a best selling book about greed which catches the eye of Jake Moore, a sharp wall street trader who has just proposed to Gekko's estranged daughter Winnie.
In 2008 Gekko (Michael Douglas) used to the good life now has to contend with renting an apartment and doing the lecture circuit about the financial world and it's forthcoming economic downturn. He takes to advising Jake (Shia LaBeouf) while bartering information on the welfare of his daughter, Winnie (Carey Mulligan) in exchange he gives Jake hints regarding the death of Jake's mentor/father-figure Louis Zabel (Frank Langellla) . Winnie has no desire to see her father and warns Jake to keep away from him. Gekko is still a charismatic egocentric with whom Jake is leery yet impressed with his knowledge which gives him the ammunition in which to take down hedge fund money mover Bretton James (Josh Brolin) who had orchestrated the collapse of Zabel's bank. Jake was trying to get a clean energy company off the ground that needed $100 million to finish it's testing and get it running. Unfortunately investment into his pet project is stymied by the Wall Street crash. Even Jakes's mother (Susan Saradon) a nurse turned Realtor needs to borrow $200,000 from her son to keep her houses on the market. When Jake discovers that Gekko had left his daughter a small fortune in a Swiss bank and Gekko promises that he knows how to move that money to his green energy company, that's when things go awry.
Oliver Stone, so adapt at bringing dense material to an entertaining level, manages to keep you awake despite the baffling barrage of Wall Street verbiage with quick scenes and split screens. The screenplay by Stephen Schiff and Allan Loeb if full of business babble that is just as bad as techno babble and you have to let it wash over you while you concentrate on the story of Gekko trying to reconnect with his daughter and Jake trying to take down the bad guys. There's also lots of talk on “moral hazard” which still is unclear.
You don't have to see the first movie, but keep an eye out for Charlie Sheen as Bud in a brief cameo. Douglas eats up the screen as Gekko. Gray and aging, he struts around like he still owns the place. LaBeouf tries to look like a grown up in nicely cut suits while delivering lines that make your eyes glaze over. Carey Mulligan's hippie centric character runs a blog that uncovers stories that will hopefully change the world, but for some reason has trouble seeing the story unfolding in front of her. She spends most of the time looking petulant at her father. When told that she has millions stashed in the bank for her, she can only say “I don't want it”. Really?
(Review by reesa)
No comments:
Post a Comment