Wall Street:
Money Never Sleeps is a nasty film safely wrapped in a
suit of pink, satin decorative pillows to make it easily
digestible for today’s overly-sensitive audiences. It
seems indicative of its director Oliver Stone’s career path,
from hard-edged, controversially frenetic filmmaker, to the
man behind World Trade Center. Even more so it
seems reflective of our film-watching culture, of the sort
of softness we, as mainstream film consumers, have come to
demand from our pictures. Sadly, Wall Street: Money
Never Sleeps suffers, it’s easy edges entirely drowning
out the mean little kernel of a film that lives within.
Review - Wall Street: Money
Never Sleeps
Stone’s film
begins with hero, and avatar, of the 1980s Gordon Gekko
(Michael Douglas, leathery as ever) being released from
prison, alone and possibly bereft of the cash he so
assuredly collected in the first film. From here we’re
given a "seven years later" flashcard and introduced to Jake
Moore (Shia LeBouf) a moral young "Wall Street guy" in a
serious relationship with Winnie Gekko (Carey Mulligan,
continuing her meteoric rise), Gordon’s estranged daughter.
When Moore’s mentor (the always impeccable Frank Langella)
throws himself in front of train amidst plummeting stock
prices, he must question his moral rectitude and immerse
himself in the shadier side of Wall Street, with help of the
master himself Gordon Gekko.
It’s an admirable, if not original, premise for a sequel,
but it Stone doesn’t have the strength to keep the film in
line with its predecessor, which is a hard, mean bit of
filmmaking that shows just how destructive the financial
world can be. Instead Stone gives us a hint of
corruption, of banks and politics gone bad, of billionaires
living extravagant lives at the expense of anything, of
moral compasses gone awry, but he can’t maintain that evil
throughline. Instead he peppers the films with
obnoxious in-jokes (the appearance of Charlie Sheen’s Bud
Fox is especially irksome) and again, only allows the film
the appearance of financial superficiality, instead tying in
a love story that in its final moments bottoms out the
entire film. Even Douglas’ Gordon Gekko seems a mere
gimmick, a mish-mash of catchy one-liners and plot
contrivances that robs the character of the credibility he
so surely captured in the first film.
In fine sequel fashion, Money Never Sleeps isn’t just
about Wall Street, it’s about crumbling banks and the
collusion between government and our financial institutions,
and using Jake Moore as a guide, Stone gives us an almost
behind-the-scenes take on the near collapse of our economy.
But as much as he blows whistles and waves flags, Stone can
never fully pull the trigger, choosing instead to
Swiss-cheese his plot with romance and flashy-editing,
decimating his tone and gutting his film in the process.
Perhaps Stone (who even makes an appearance in the film)
just didn’t have it in him to, amidst all of this economic
recession, to make a film without some sort of gooey heart,
some sort of satisfying, hope-driven conclusion. Or
perhaps Oliver Stone has just gone soft.
Noah Sanders is the blog/news editor at Light In The
Attic and a contributor at Sound On The Sound and
the KEXP blog. He also has his own
Criterion-based film site, Criterion Quest.
If you'd like to contact Noah in regards to his
writings here at Side One: Track One then please do
so
here.
- Noah Sanders
-
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