Money Monster (2016)

Powerful

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

For the first time in years I was able to watch a film from start to finish enjoying every moment. The acting was superb from Clooney's over the top role as a money advisor to Robert's slick producer guiding Clooney and O'Connel through an intricate script. All of the cast enhanced the enjoyment by portraying their characters with reality. I found it engrossing and slightly disturbing as it made me wonder how near the truth it was. Recommend this film as a good watch.

This movie is pretty good as a movie. Lets get the obvious parts first, shall we?The plot is pretty modern... and I mean, modern. It is a plot that could just worked at this time and place. This is both good and bad: Good because you actually feel that something like this could happen at any moment. Bad because it makes the movie obsolete in the exact moment something like this can be proven that would not work. It is a deep plot, but extremely unlikely that in any event similar they just don't destroy the receiver easily. Also it overhauls: you perceive the plot twists a lot of time before they happen.The characters are solid, but not enough for you to care about them. Not even George Clooney's face would make you bet for him, although he is a really solid actor.The music is terrible. Melodramatic I-know-I-heard-this-before music mixed with rap.Cinemathography and photography? Excellent. Just on point. It is a movie about making TV. It works.In short, not a good movie, not a bad movie. Just a middle field movie with nothing special. Watch it once and forget about it.

Lee Gates (George Clooney) runs a Kramer "Mad Money" type of financial show on FNN. IBIS, a huge corporation just dropped $800 million dollars due to an "algorithm glitch." How did this happen? Kyle Budwell (Jack O'Connell) is an inquiring mind that wants to know. Kyle also has a gun and an explosive vest as he forces his way into Lee's show and demands answers. As Lee is taken hostage his program director (Julia Roberts) is attempting to locate people within IBIS to give them real answers.With this all-star cast, it was hard not to enjoy the film. After watching a glimpse of the previews I thought Clooney would be the bad guy. the stock broker who pumps and dumps stock, who works with corporations to manipulate stocks, by recommendations through kickbacks. Brokers who tell the little guy to buy while telling their heavy investors to sell. Sorry if I digress, but I am still waiting for that film. The relationship that Clooney develops with the shooter was not believable, but it was fun to watch.Guide: F-word. Sex. No nudity.

George Clooney plays one of those financial news network know-it-alls, rolling up his sleeves and getting to work upping his predictions about some stocks and damning others. He's self centered and petty. He wears costumes and does the macarena at the introduction to his show, which is shot on a New York set full of elaborate displays of electronic junk. Julia Roberts, the show's director, is in the control room behind a glass panel, providing the voice in his ear. Then, during one routine but colorful show, Jack O'Connell sneaks onto the set, holds everyone at gunpoint and makes Clooney don an explosive vest. O'Connell, an ordinary working stiff from Queens, has lost his life saving investing in a stock that Clooney had pimped and that had then dropped like a plumb line, just like mine always do. O'Connell angrily queries Clooney about the $800 million lost in one day by Ibis Corporation. Well, the situation is tense, I can tell you.The technology was sometimes over my head. There were TV cameras and monitors all over the place and prominent use was made of smart phone like Blackberries and Blueberries and everybody is texting one another and shouting into microphones and making sure their earplugs were properly seated in the external auditory canals and I don't know what all. This sometimes induced a confused state of consciousness but didn't interfere with the essence of the plot. The CEO of Ibis had used a manual override on the algorithm (or "algo") and sneakily caused the stock to drop after shorting it. Something like that, anyway. Clooney, having just found this out, accuses the CEO of fraud. But is it? It sounds more like larceny of some sort, or maybe embezzlement. No matter.It was directed by Jodie Foster, who is smart and who knows her way around cameras. She does a decent enough job but the details of the script are torturous and sometimes you can get lost in them. Who's shouting to whom around here? And how in the name of Bog could she have let O'Connell get away with waving that pistol around so wildly -- and holding it sideways, something that became a cliché many years ago. It made me wince.Clooney is fine, as usual. He's a pretty good actor. There are a plethora of stars that play action scenes impassively, but when Clooney is batted around the set or has a pistol shoved in his face he looks genuinely scared. Have you ever seen (or imagined) Clint Eastwood or Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sylvester Stallone look truly scared? No? I thought not. The best they can do when threatened with lethal force is look mildly annoyed.Julia Roberts is Julia Roberts, looking no less good without ten layers of iridescent make up. Caitriona Balfe is just fine as Ibis's PR person, formally known as a chief communications officer. She's very sexy and she's Irish. But I felt sorry for the aggrieved Jack O'Connell. He overacts wildly, uses a fake New York City accent (he's Irish too), and has some sort of speech impediment, causing him to deliver a pale simulacrum of his most passionate lines. At the same time, he certainly LOOKS the part of the washed out urban loser.All together, not a bad movie but not a particularly well-done movie either -- not even a glimpse of Maria Bartiromo. Better to have to sit through "Money Monster" than to have invested in Lucent Technology.