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. <\/em><\/p>\n Read his reviews online at ReThinkReviews.net<\/a>. Watch his videos at www.youtube.com\/user\/jsjkim<\/a>, and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com\/ReThinkReviews<\/a>. ReThink Reviews’ theme song is by Restavrant<\/a>. <\/p>\n Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps<\/strong><\/p>\n Oliver Stone\u2019s sequel to the 1987 film WALL STREET is subtitled \u201cMoney Never Sleeps\u201d. But what almost did sleep was me while sitting through WALL STREET: If you\u2019re thinking of seeing MONEY NEVER SLEEPS, it\u2019s 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\u2019s infamous \u201cGreed is good\u201d speech, where, in Sadly, you\u2019ll 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019re 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\u2019s estranged daughter.<\/p>\n After Jake\u2019s 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\u2019s collapse. While Jake believes that he can learn from Gekko and that time has warmed the lizard\u2019s heart, Winnie is less convinced.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019t 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\u2019t matter much to me since all the people involved are millionaires who will turn out fine no matter what.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS is rated PG-13 and is in theaters now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" | the entire program 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rethink-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16440\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Rethink](\"\/home\/graphics\/rethink_reviews_small.jpg\")
<\/a>Taking a deeper look at current and past films and how they relate to the world today. <\/strong><\/p>\n
\nMONEY NEVER SLEEPS, which clocks in at a bulky 2 hours and 13 minutes. But the problem with this film isn\u2019t that it tries to say too much \u2014 it\u2019s that it doesn\u2019t say nearly enough.<\/p>\n
\n45 seconds, Gekko makes such a convincing case for the benefits of greed that it inspired generations of investment bankers to follow in Gekko\u2019s slimy footsteps.<\/p>\n