It ain’t easy being green

FILM REVIEW

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
DIRECTED BY: Oliver Stone
STARRING: Michael Douglas, Shia LaBeouf, Josh Brolin, Carey Mulligan, Susan Sarandon
CERT: 12A

Watching Oliver Stone’s take on the economic apocalypse is like listening to an old joke. You’re sitting there thinking – yeah, Ollie, we know. We know what happened, we know how it happened, we know the kind of gougers who made it happen. And hey! We know the punchline – the crooks ride off laughing into the sunset while we pick up the bill.
Strangely enough though, Mr Stone doesn’t dwell too much on that. For a man who has used the cinema pulpit to excellent effect in the past, this sermon has no fire and brimstone.
So you wonder what was the point, apart from the fact that the financial meltdown provided a convenient excuse to bring Gordon Gekko out of the vault and let Michael Douglas take one of cinema’s great villains for another walk around the block. A notion that I suppose had some merit, though generally I wouldn’t be one to cheer for that kind of thing. (I’d make an exception for Ferris Bueller, whose adult life is surely intriguing enough for some filmmaker to go there. Plus, like this Wall Street sequel, there’s a Charlie Sheen character to catch up with.)
If bringing the main man out of forced retirement was the whole idea, then why does he only get to play a bit part, instead of taking centre stage? Who knows? And, sadly, this is becoming the default question concerning Oliver Stone movies – who gives a hoot?
It’s 2001 and Gekko (Douglas) is leaving prison after serving time for his financial skullduggery. (Now there’s a laugh!) Is he a changed man? Well, we’re certainly urged to feel sorry for the poor craytur. To start with, there’s nobody waiting to pick him up. Hand me a tissue, quick.
Seven years later, Gekko is hawking a new book and lecturing business students on the university circuit. Here he meets Jake Moore (LaBeouf), a young trader with two feet already on the ladder but a heart of gold for balance. He wants to save the planet with green energy, so he must be good. He’s also engaged to Gekko’s daughter Winnie (Mulligan), who’s a liberal political blogger, so she must be good too.
But she doesn’t like her Daddy. She blames him for her brother’s death and she wants nothing to do with him.
Meanwhile, the gougers have melted the markets. Jake’s old Wall Street firm goes down the jacks and his mentor Louis Zabel (Frank Langella) goes under, with a helpful push from archrival Bretton James (Brolin).
Jake wants revenge – and would you look who’s here to lend a hand, with one eye on reconciliation with his daughter and the other shark’s eyeball on all the fun and games to be had on his old playing field.
As a piece of drama, Money Never Sleeps works reasonably well, but Stone could have done everyone a favour and cut a good half hour off a script that plods along too often and is weighed down with a few too many characters. Susan Sarandon does a fine job as Jake’s mother but, as far as the story is concerned, she wouldn’t have been missed. Also, the director’s fondness for unnecessary visual trickery – split screen, for example – can really get on the nerves.
Fortunately he got the casting more or less spot on. LaBeouf might not have been the strongest choice for the lead (maybe because it’s hard to forget that whole silly Indiana Jones thing) but he does well opposite an excellent Josh Brolin and holds his own on the too-rare occasions when he faces off with Douglas – who’s clearly having a ball in his old Oscar-winning role. (again, why is he on the sidelines?)
There are other fine performances too – Carey Mulligan is good, Frank Langella is great in his brief role and though Charlie Sheen hardly outstays his welcome, it’s nice to catch up with old Bud Fox.
The sum of the parts, however, just doesn’t amount to half the film it might have been if the younger, angrier Oliver Stone had made it.
Certainly that man would not have filmed the kind of diabolical ending that his older, mellower alter ego has here.
He might just have paid more mind to the average schmuck, tightening his belt in his foreclosed house and girding his loins for the horrors that await in the budget. Whatever about money, average schmuck won’t be getting much sleep.