"Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" is what they used to call an A-picture: A movie star at the head, nice clothing, wide angles cut with meaningful close-ups, big speeches about How We Live Now. It's a large, floppy animal of a movie, or maybe a very earnest herd of them. Sitting through this behemoth is a bit like being run over by a pod of whales attempting to explain the last few years of American financial chaos to you. Also, there is a motorcycle race through fall foliage, because who doesn't like motorcycles and leaves?
Returning to the role that got him an Oscar, Michael Douglas is the brilliantly named Gordon Gekko, the financier busted for insider trading bank in 1987's "Wall Street."
Released from prison with empty pockets and his comically large cell phone in the not-insignificant year of 2001, Gekko looks confused and sad. Next thing we know, it's 2008, Gekko is peddling a book called "Is Greed Good?" (Answer: Not if Gekko isn't involved).
His future son-in-law Jacob Moore (Shia LaBeouf) is trying to split the moral baby - he wants to make a ton on Wall Street working for the awfully Bear Stearns-ish Keller Zabel, but he also wants to push alternative energy. His gal, Gekko's daughter Winnie (Carey Mulligan, forlorn throughout), works for a liberal blog and has disowned her father.
Moore should really know something is up when his mentor Louis Zabel (Frank Langella, oy vey) gives him a million-dollar bonus out of the blue. But nope. This is a kid who speaks Mandarin to Chinese investors but has never heard the story of the Dutch tulip craze - not a great look for an alleged Fordham graduate.
When Keller Zabel collapses, Moore turns to Gekko for help with revenge upon the obvious culprit, Bretton James (Josh Brolin, who can't quite shake looking Texan), a partner at the Goldman Sachs-ish Churchill Schwartz,
James, in classic thriller fashion, offers Moore a job. With Moore determined to get Winnie and her father back together and take out James, the gears of market manipulation start to grind. After Gekko makes a few moves right out of Greek theatre and starts donning a series of increasingly ugly suits, Moore decides to get even - uh, again.
Stone seems of two (or more) minds about Gekko. He swears Gekko was the villain in "Wall Street," yet he was easily the most interesting character and subsequently worshipped by a generation of Street geeks.
But here, Stone casts Gekko as the Ghost of Boomer Past, ready to manipulate the people and markets that moved on without him, surveying the culture his kind created and condemning everything from which he cannot yet profit.
Stone is constantly infantilizing anyone younger than 50. Bretton James is evil, but he's not a moron. Gekko calls the twenty-somethings he's talking to "NINJAS" ("No Income No Job or Assets") and informs them that they are screwed - they applaud him anyway instead of stringing him up. LaBeouf and Mulligan look more like children than fully formed adults, kids that can be bought and sold and cajoled into maybe forgiving and forgetting. Come on, Jake - it's Wall Street.
Speaking of casting, there are some eye-popping misfires. Langella, despite his outer kindness, wanders so close to stereotype that you expect him to start belting "If I Were a Rich Man." Eli Wallach, apparently still alive, plays an ancient banker often hidden in the shadows. Given Stone's summer rants to the U.K.'s Sunday Times about Jewish control of the media, this is uncomfortable stuff.
By the time the motorcycles have been raced and the mentors and protégés have been sorted into good and evil, meanings become plain. Capital still rules everything around you. You kids stay amused with your young love and your little websites. Go make babies and leave running to world into the ground to your elders. You might be through with boomers, but boomers are not through with you.
'Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps'
Our grade: B-
Genre: Drama
Running Time: 133 min
MPAA rating: PG-13
Release Date: Sep 24, 2010
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