Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps…but it yawns

 

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

 

Rated: PG-13

Genre: Drama

Info: IMDB

Directed By: Oliver Stone

Starring: Michael Douglas, Shia Lebeouf, Carrie Mulligan, Josh Brolin

This is a review that is late to the boards, but I had to venture out, pay my money and see this as I was such a fan of the first one. Let me get this out of the way first, I’m not a fan of Oliver Stone. He and I have some problems ever since he butchered “The Doors” and told a story that was accurate in his own mind. Aside from that, I have never really been a fan of his other than “Wall Street”.

Gordon & Jake

Gordon Gekko is back! After serving 8 years in prison for insider trading and a few other white collar crimes, GG is released from prison and seems to be, well, just Michael Douglas. Soft, caring and less “pop” that GG had 20 years prior. From the start this film lacked the punch it needed to coincide with the recent crash that lead to the recession we’re currently experiencing. Josh Brolin stars as “Bretton James” a Wall street tycoon that wrangles, shakes, bankrupts and buys out an anchor of the global financial market which leads one of the founding partners, “Louis Zabel” played by Frank Langella, to commit suicide by subway. Bretton takes the form of Gordon of former years, only concerned with being the King and how long he can stay there.

Shia Labeouf is the only worthwhile performance, playing Gordon’s soon to be son-in-law “Jake Moore”. Tied up in emotion over the broken relationship he has with his daughter, Jake tries to mend bad ties with Gordon and daughter “Winnie Gekko” played by Carrie Mulligan. If there is anything that we can take from the first installment of “Wall Street” is that money and feelings or “emotions” have no business together, one who has either, has not both. So the front that we see Gordon displays is ultimately for the reason of obtaining the $100 million in which he put in Winnies name in an off shore account in Switzerland. So for the first three quarters of the film we do see more of this soft, passive “Michael Douglas” type character and for good reason. He see’s that Jake is more of the susceptible one and gets to his Winnies money through him, he turns around and sets up shop in Europe and boasts how he turns $100 million into 1.1 billion. The GG of old is back! Not quite.

Gordon Gekko

As Jake and Winnies relationship hits the skids, due to lying and deceptive tactics of Jack, Gordon shows up to mend old wounds and create a new life with his new/old family. He ends up donating $100 million to Jake’s pet project (not worth mentioning).

Franky, this was the most disappointing sequels I have seen in a very long time. I was really anticipating a great follow up to the original, and that may have very well been my problem. There wasn’t that injection into the life of a financial wizard there was in the first WS; especially with the current crisis in which the world is in today. They had such promising possibilities to really dive into the crisis full steam, rock the audience and give every one of us what we paid for. I saw none of that, each time I thought we’d pick up a little action, we were sidelined by some emotional dialogue that took us right out. It was like being on a roller coaster with no big steep drops and never goes above 20 mph. It was such a let down and is to be expected by Oliver Stone! I can say that they symbolism of a lot of well placed props in some shots, alluding bubbles, and witty dialogue made up for some of the lack in plot. Oh, and Charlie Sheen makes an appearance as Bud Fox for all of 30 seconds.

In the end, needless to say I was very disappointed. Of course, this should be something you should watch just for the sake of watching it. There are far worse movies out there that you can waste 2 hours on, so when this hits the shelves, rent it or put it in your Netflix queue. At least when it comes up in conversation you’ll have something to discuss.

1.5 Knocks out of 5