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Taking a deeper look at current and past films and how they relate to the world today.

Jonathan Kim is an independent film critic who writes and produces film reviews for Uprising and other outlets. He is a former co-producer at Brave New Films.

Read his reviews online at ReThinkReviews.net. Watch his videos at www.youtube.com/user/jsjkim, and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/ReThinkReviews. ReThink Reviews’ theme song is by Restavrant.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

Oliver Stone’s sequel to the 1987 film WALL STREET is subtitled “Money Never Sleeps”. But what almost did sleep was me while sitting through WALL STREET:
MONEY NEVER SLEEPS, which clocks in at a bulky 2 hours and 13 minutes. But the problem with this film isn’t that it tries to say too much — it’s that it doesn’t say nearly enough.

If you’re thinking of seeing MONEY NEVER SLEEPS, it’s probably because you saw the 1987 original, where Michael Douglas played the unforgettable Gordon Gekko, a cold-blooded investment banker who perfectly embodied the era of corporate raiders, hostile takeovers and materialism that epitomized the 80s. This, of course, was crystallized in Gekko’s infamous “Greed is good” speech, where, in
45 seconds, Gekko makes such a convincing case for the benefits of greed that it inspired generations of investment bankers to follow in Gekko’s slimy footsteps.

Sadly, you’ll find nothing in MONEY NEVER SLEEPS that even approaches that level of clarity and commentary, even though those of us living through these insane economic times would love to hear a character like Gekko nail this era down for us in a snappy speech like he did in 1987.

MONEY NEVER SLEEPS opens with Gekko emerging from prison in 2001 after being convicted of the insider trading that happened in the first movie. Gekko then disappears, as he sadly does for several chunks of the film, and we’re treated to a heaping helping of Shia LeBouef playing Jake Moore, a talented young investment banker with a soft spot for clean energy who is engaged to Winnie, played by Carey Mulligan, who runs a lefty website and is Gekko’s estranged daughter.

After Jake’s mentor and father figure becomes a casualty of the subprime meltdown, Jake decides to reach out to his future father in law, who has returned to prominence as a sort of guru after writing a book predicting the economy’s collapse. While Jake believes that he can learn from Gekko and that time has warmed the lizard’s heart, Winnie is less convinced.

I don’t have anything against Lebouef, who I find to be an intense young actor, but when you watch a WALL STREET movie, you want to see Michael Douglas chewing scenery, not Lebouef extolling the green virtues of fusion. And while Mulligan is a consistently strong actress, she has little to do but spend most of the movie on the verge of tears.

Symbolizing the new breed of capitalist superpredator is Josh Brolin as Bretton James, who heads a firm modeled after Goldman Sachs and who Jake blames for destroying his mentor and his firm. Using tips and insider info from Gekko, Jake vows revenge.

Therein lies the fatal flaw of MONEY NEVER SLEEPS, which seeks to portray the economy as a tool for settling personal scores, not as an enabler of pathological, government-sanctioned greed. The main characters aren’t so much participants in the economic meltdown as bystanders as it happens around them while they play dirty investor tricks on each other to settle grudges. Which, in the end, didn’t matter much to me since all the people involved are millionaires who will turn out fine no matter what.

Perhaps the financial crisis is a topic best explained in documentaries, without the burdens of storylines and fictionalized characters. In the meantime, MONEY NEVER SLEEPS is a lot like our economy: a total freaking mess.

WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS is rated PG-13 and is in theaters now.