Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010)

People are voting emotionally.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Perhaps because I did not see the 1987 version, I found this 2010 version a compelling watch. Perhaps because I was in private business and found the 2008 meltdown too predictable, I found 'just another' movie about greed a compelling watch. And, no, I did not find the main lady unfeminine as another reviewer apparently did. Carey Mulligan added a depth of vulnerability and sexuality that came across with good acting, not naked exposure. Beauty is, I suppose, in the eye of the beholder. While I have lost that admiration I once had for Michael Douglas, I found his and the other actors' performances most entertaining. I would be more compelled to give this movie a nine because its story and filming drew me in. I found none of it boring but maybe that was because I found the reality of its various characters too real in comparison to characters I met on both sides of that Canadian border in business life before this economic meltdown happened. Perhaps the movie is not so sincere because it portrays real tyrants as being made accountable in the end. That is yet to happen in the real world. But the irony is in what happened after I bought this DVD as a Blu-ray/Digital copy package as a 'collector's edition'. Yup, good old greed came to play as the Fox corporation made great promises on its packaging about how this movie could be played on all of my personal devices. And then Fox tried to shut down its use after I had downloaded only one copy with their special 'registration code'. As if I were in this movie, I had to challenge FDC about false advertising. Bankers. Business. False promises to the endless benefits we will accrue. Sad parallels remain in our world. Ironic that this is a movie about greed and what is essentially false advertising about the ethics of our big businesses. Oh, perhaps I should bump the rating up to 10 because, really, the movie expresses emotions about betrayal and dishonesty in such a pretty way that it is really a continuing statement of the hypocrisies of big business. That these people still have to be challenged to be true to their word instead of becoming just another proponent of greed? This movie should cause all of us to pause to ask: am I really just another enabling part of all of this? A beautifully filmed movie in interesting locations, if nothing else. But all else, especially the acting, came together to make this a movie that really mattered in the end to me. Fiction? Yes, I am glad that I bought the movie and after watching it twice to catch all of the hidden nuances, I do know that I will watch it again. After I cool down about Fox playing their own dirty business games.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010): Dir: Oliver Stone / Cast: Michael Douglas, Shia LaBeouf, Carey Mulligan, Josh Brolin, Frank Langella: Sequel to Wall Street, that seems to suggest ones wealth as a form of revenge or superiority. Michael Douglas returns as Gordon Gekko who is released from prison after activities in the first film. His only family is a daughter who disconnected from him but he may reconnect through her boyfriend who also works within Wall Street. Oliver Stone returns as director and is backed by a superb performance by Douglas who, as Gekko, is an anti-hero that viewers cannot help but like. He wishes to reconnect with his daughter yet he still plays the money field using her fiancé. Shia LaBeouf plays his future son-in-law seeking inside secrets but it will be at a cost. He agrees to attempt to reconnect him with his daughter. Carey Mulligan plays Gekko's daughter who struggles with her feelings towards her father. She is angry but she also questions LaBeouf whom she warns about her father's nature. The outcome of the love relationship is obvious and a weak point in the film. Josh Brolin plays the new scheming villain whom LaBeouf is connected with and whom Gekko plans to sabotage and dismantle. And the scene stealing Frank Langella plays LaBeouf's managing director. It has been over twenty years since the release of Wall Street and Oliver Stone points out that society has changed just as filmmaking itself has. That is one of the charms of this effective sequel. It demonstrates greed, corruption and the need to revive. Score: 9 / 10

This movie seemed a little rushed to me, in a sense that as soon as the global financial crisis happened, Oliver Stone immediately sat down with his pen and began to write a movie based on the events, bringing characters from the original movie forward in time so that he may comment on the events of 2008. This is the first sequel Oliver Stone has written, and while it was not a bad movie, it did seem somewhat contrived to deal with the events of 2008.The original movie was meant to be a criticism of Wall Street, however it turned out that it was not taken as a criticism but as supporting the culture of Wall Street, particularly with sayings like 'for lack of a better word, greed is good.' However, in this film, the saying goes, 'where I originally said greed is good, now it seems to have become legal'.Gordon Gecko returns in this film, having been released from gaol penniless and with a collection of antique memorabilia from his high flying days back in the 80's. His daughter has grown up and she is now in a relationship with another young Wall Street up and comer. He works for a very old and venerable investment bank that suddenly finds itself under attack during a period of market volatility, and its share price is driven down so low that it makes it a bargain which is quickly snapped up. Jack Moore, the new hero of the story, smells a rat, especially since the owner commits suicide. However he needs the help of Gordon Gecko to get to the bottom of what is going on.Gecko appears to have changed through his time in prison, however in many cases it seems to be a façade which he uses to get himself back onto the rich list. He suggests that if he had $100 million then he could easily cash in on the crisis. However, there is also something human about him, which is what Moore uses to bring him over. There is also the idea that green energy is going to be the next bubble (it's not, rather two years on, I have noticed that it is the mining boom, at least here in Australia, that is driving the next bubble. With a number of small cap mining stocks making up to 1000% gains since July 2010 it goes to show that the green energy bubble has yet to materialise).The movie tries to explore the reasons behind the crash of 2008, trying to explore ideas such as Collateral Debt Obligations and the like, however I think a number of these areas are quite complicated, and in the end it was a rigged casino culture on Wall Street that sought to over inflate assets and false rumours to destroy one's rivals. Once again, it all comes back to bite the bad guy in the movie, though in real life that did not necessarily happen. It always comes down to a fall guy, and in the real crisis, that fall guy was Bernard Mardoff. Everybody else seemed to get away with their multi-million dollar bonuses.

As far as modern Hollywood films go, WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS is all right. As a sequel to one of the best films of the '80s, it's a complete disappointment, with a watered-down script and even Oliver Stone off the boil. What happened to all the energy you used to find in his films? This one is sluggish and as a director he seems almost disinterested in the material.There are some good things about this film, but they're mostly the bits that reflect the first. Inevitably, Michael Douglas is the best thing in it, but he's given way too little screen time and there's a betrayal of his character in the first movie in that he's softened up this time around; he's not the Gordon Gekko of old. Josh Brolin's corporate bad guy is all right, but the two youthful leads, Shia LaBeouf and Carey Mulligan, are absolutely horrible.LaBeouf is just out of his depth here and his acting stinks. The only film I liked him in was LAWLESS and all the rest have suffered as a result of his attempts at performance. Even worse is the single-expressioned Carey Mulligan's, whose perma-sad face is by far the most irritating thing in the whole movie. I almost had to look away every time she was on screen, she's that awful.The material starts off half-interesting, but the storyline takes ages to develop. The first hour or so retains the attention, but then there's a long, dry patch in the middle before things pick up a little at the end. Unfortunately, the final opinion I came away with is that this is a lazy cash-in, nothing more. A film that concentrated on Gekko alone without any of this kid stuff would have been much more gripping...