Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
Where Oliver Stone shines is in retelling history with his story, and he gives you a convincing argument for at least two hours (which is to his credit). Whether we agree is another topic. WS:MNS is just another case in point. For instance, the market crash and its timeline depicted in this movie is accurate, though he merges Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase into one bank called “Churchill-Shwartz” and fictionalizes Bear Sterns as well into “Keller Zabel Investments,” which are obviously concoctions of his imagination.
What it does well is dramatize the events for a guy like me, who has an intermediate knowledge about buying and trading in the stock market, to get a visual idea of what all went down in 2008. I liked seeing the emotional reactions to the corporate greed that cost us the next few generations - albeit on film. It brought the idea closer to home that it wasn’t the government that was bailing those corporations out. How could they? The government’s in debt. (Heck, they’re printing money just to say they have money.) We, the taxpayers, were bailing them out without any say in the matter. “Thank you, Big Government!”
On that end, Stone did an excellent job.
With the actual story line, though, there was just too many things going on. It was manageable enough for my brain to follow, but if a good story is about someone who wants something so bad he’s willing to go through hell to get it, then I didn’t know what the story was about ‘coz I didn’t know what Jake Moore (Shia LeBeouf) really wanted. He wanted a lot of things: to reconcile Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) with his estranged daughter; to destroy the public image of a global investment bank; to pin the death of his mentor on a billionaire hedge fund manager; to raise nine-figures and save a fusion research project; and finally to keep his relationship with Winnie Gekko from ending. Man, this should’ve been a mini-series instead. I would’ve rather have watched a movie entirely about Gordon Gekko coming back to power, but I guess it’s all about Young Hollywood.
Talent-wise, the best actor in the film was Academy Award® winner Carey Mulligan who played Gekko’s daughter, Winnie. Her emotions were felt and authentic… or as authentic as acting can make it be. While LeBeouf, on the other hand, shouldn’t take roles that depicts him crying. Tears don’t suit him. He can’t pull it off. They should’ve casted Andrew Garfield (“The Social Network”), whom I predict will be Oscar’s future “Man Friday.”
On a final note: Ron Paul for President, 2012!
★ ★ 1/2
