Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps review

A great performance drama is as exciting, entralling and flat out entertaining as any action movie or genre film. Sometimes all you need is just the right combination of performers and creators to have find pure, unfiltered cinematic enjoyment. "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" does it proper from square one and keeps it's tempo all the way through the closing credits with the Talking Heads melody. It's an important film because it does tell of the inner secret thoughts of wall street fat cats come the time of the market crash in 08' and it's an Oliver Stone film because it gleefully plays with the humanity of it's characters through moral and logical dilemmas.

If you're an avid reader of this (which is to assume I have avid readers, pft!) or simply know my tastes then you know that Stone ranks among my favorite filmmakers and that's heavily thanks to "JFK"; which I saw at a young age and I can honestly say changed my life to a certain extent. Beyond that however are a number of other greats by him ('Platoon', 'Born on the Fourth of July', 'Nixon', 'Natural Born Killers', 'The Doors', 'Any Given Sunday', 'W.' and of course the original 'Wall Street'), but they all enjoyed playing with their characters moral compass. Interestingly it's something that got Stone criticized back then, as he allowed for a lot of emotion to overrun logic in his characters. However something we all know is that human beings aren't particularly logical by and large and when put under hard situations become even less logical. But hey those films were also angry as hell. That was his angry phase; now Stone appears to be in his older, more centered, somewhat more forgiving, but not forgetting phase. It's a nice evolution where it never feels quite like he's delivering a lighter package to us, but simply a different one angled to effect you slightly differently.

With the new 'Wall Street' the rules have changed much since the 80's, but the objective is still the same. Get more money than somebody else and do it the best way you can without getting caught. Michael Douglas' Gordon Gekko (the character for which won him his Oscar) is released from prison and into the new world where he's seen the writing on the wall and knows where the market is heading. So he writes an explosive book prophesying a new market crash soon and starts in up doing college tours. At the same time Shia LaBeouf is young stock trader Jacob Moore who's just made his first million and is preparing to marry Gekko's daughter Winnie (Carry Mulligan... who apparently can do no wrong). As the market crash nears Jake's company takes some major hits and is refused any help by the other company heads which leads to it's founder and Jake's mentor (played by Frank Langella) to commit suicide. Jake believes it was caused by Britten James (Josh Brolin), who has had it out for them since the early 2000's. And wouldn't you just know it, but Gekko believes that James might also have ratted him out to the feds back in the 80's. And thus the stagings for a wall street revenge plot are erected.

The plot grows much more personalized throughout as it deals heavily with Gordon and Winnie very estranged relationship and also how far Jacob gets into this backstabbing, cut throat world. Through this the film sheds some of it's docudrama feel as well as some of it's general spite towards wall street. Overall though I can it was for a reason and I suppose a rather nice one. Who is Gordon Gekko in the year 2008? Has prison changed him or made him worse? It's worth finding out for yourself. But Douglas does play him with less edge and subtle villainy and I'll say that's what makes the final act work so well. You generally like him this time. Shia LaBeouf has had to deal with the oh so shitty public backlash pretty much since Indy 4. I don't think he was the problem with the film so much as the lackluster script. Generally I really like the dude. I've seen him and read him in interviews and he comes off as a hard worker and someone who's down to earth rather than obsessed with making a name for himself or being a celebrity. Here he gives probably his best performance and more than holds his own next to Douglas, Mulligan, Brolin, Sarandon and Langella. I mean seriously despite liking the dude even I thought he was outmatched, but damn if Stone isn't able to bring out a full fledged performance.

The film is completely structured to give even the smallest character bits just the right amount of screen time and just the right amount of info to know where they lay in the world at that time. This helps keep the tempo fresh and moving along without too much lag time. Even cameos by Stone and Charlie Sheen are paced out in a brisk, but never rushed fashion. We also get a great piece of Stone film editing the day of the market crash. I won't say what the scene looks like or how it's set up, but if you've seen his films then you'll know what I'm talking about. It's a bit piece, but one that definitely made me crack a smile.

"Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" is and isn't a sequel. Yes we get some of those characters from the original and all, but it never feels like a return so much as us viewing a new world that playing the same old games. Generally we don't get a lot of in depth looks at wall street anymore sans for documentaries here and there or the news. The downside of there is that 99% of docs are going to give one perspective to that world and more than likely it's negative. This cuts down the interviews and dampens the reception you might get when you come knocking and wanting things from the people you're calling white collar thieves. When it comes to the glorious world of fake movies however... people are a little more forthcoming. They don't always know how they'll be portrayed thus they might be willing to chat just a bit longer or let you poke around the business floor a few minutes more. Dramatizing certain events also makes it easier to explain complex and bad events without naming the real criminals or victims personally. Yes Wall Street is all about the money, but that's not always evil. The morality (or lack there of) is in what you do with it. It's can also be about who's the better liar, but really that's a lot like general life too. That's just how this human chess game works I guess. This is one of the most entertaining dramas I've seen all year and one made through it's ability to keep us constantly interested while watching it. Whether it be from rich man excess, business jargon or a character's emotional break down, we're right there and with it all the way.