Wall Street Versus Main Street-Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” (2010)-A Film Review
DVD Review
By Sam Lowell
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, starring Michael Douglas, Shia LeBeouf, Cary Mulligan, directed by Oliver Stone, 2010
Yeah, Wall Street versus Main Street those kids from Occupy down the street from the august brokerage and financial towers of American business were on to something. Something that their grandparents called back in the Great Depression of the 1930s the economic royalists and today the one percent (1%-actually much less than that if you cut out the mere millionaires who are walking around with nothing but chump change these days when a billion is the starting point for anybody taking notice of your good fortune). Of course in the post-meltdown period since 2008 that idea has been played out many ways-not all to the benefit of Main Street in fact mostly not to the benefit of the great unwashed.
Still it is a little hard to understand why in 2010 the director Oliver Stone felt compelled to revisit his 1987 production of Wall Street from the days when half of America was in love with the Street and the other half wishing that they had some dough to throw at their dreams with his second coming of that classic-Wall Street-Two or to follow form Money Never Sleeps (true enough). In other words did we need to see a chastised Gordon Grekko giving his take on what ailed the Street in those bummer days after 2008 when one half of America got wiped out and the other half got conked with “under water” debt? Probably not but here were are so a few comments on the story-line seem warranted.
For those who remember Gordon Grekko, played by Michael Douglas, from the first film he was the consummate insider. A couple of decades and some serious stir time later he is a wiser man-sees where things are heading on the Street and like Cassandra wants to warn a candid world. A wiser man he may be but as the sub-theme notes money never sleeps and so our boy Gordon has seemingly lost a step or two since he was king of the hill. The big boys grabbling all the dough are now seen as heroes not bums of the month. But their day is coming.
This one takes a few big curves away from the machinations of the Street and tries to deal with things on a more personal level. It seems that Gordon’s estranged daughter Winnie, played by Cary Mulligan, has a boyfriend/fiancé who is an up and coming, well, Gordon Grekko, working his ass off in a big investment house that is going under because it is carrying too much bad paper (and being undermined by a competitor investment house partner with a grudge). The boyfriend Jacob Moore, played by Shia LeBeouf, is a go-getter for sure and winds up meeting Gordon on a book tour (Gordon has written a gloom and doom book portending the impending financial meltdown) and they strike up a bargain. Jacob tries to work to get Winnie to meet him and he will see what he can do to push Jacob up the Wall Street food chain (and especially get some traction for his clean energy project-the wave of the future).
For a while it was no soap-Winnie is still resentful about how Gordon let her brother fall through the cracks with a drug addiction problem that took his life. But eventually she softens (as well as being proudly pregnant). Then Gordon pulls a classic Grekko-proving that an old con will always be an old con (artist or vict). He has a cool one hundred million stashed in Switzerland just waiting for Winnie to grab it. She doesn’t want it until Jacob talks her into using the dough to help finance the clean energy research. She does and signs for technical reasons the dough over to dear old dad. And he runs off and turns that nothing big one hundred million into a billion. Yeah, Gordon Grekko is back, the bad ass is in the saddle once again. But here is where the stir time or something plays-Gordon is worried about seeing his grandchild so he anonymously dumps the nothing big one hundred million on that research project. Nice touch. And they say Wall Street is just a big Ponzi scheme. Shame on them. But here is the big picture-those Grekkos are still in the saddle and who knows what they are up to now-no good for Main Street. Like I said I am not quite sure why Stone felt an urge to run this storyline again. What is needed is a plan to get rid of the bums.
DVD Review
By Sam Lowell
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, starring Michael Douglas, Shia LeBeouf, Cary Mulligan, directed by Oliver Stone, 2010
Yeah, Wall Street versus Main Street those kids from Occupy down the street from the august brokerage and financial towers of American business were on to something. Something that their grandparents called back in the Great Depression of the 1930s the economic royalists and today the one percent (1%-actually much less than that if you cut out the mere millionaires who are walking around with nothing but chump change these days when a billion is the starting point for anybody taking notice of your good fortune). Of course in the post-meltdown period since 2008 that idea has been played out many ways-not all to the benefit of Main Street in fact mostly not to the benefit of the great unwashed.
Still it is a little hard to understand why in 2010 the director Oliver Stone felt compelled to revisit his 1987 production of Wall Street from the days when half of America was in love with the Street and the other half wishing that they had some dough to throw at their dreams with his second coming of that classic-Wall Street-Two or to follow form Money Never Sleeps (true enough). In other words did we need to see a chastised Gordon Grekko giving his take on what ailed the Street in those bummer days after 2008 when one half of America got wiped out and the other half got conked with “under water” debt? Probably not but here were are so a few comments on the story-line seem warranted.
For those who remember Gordon Grekko, played by Michael Douglas, from the first film he was the consummate insider. A couple of decades and some serious stir time later he is a wiser man-sees where things are heading on the Street and like Cassandra wants to warn a candid world. A wiser man he may be but as the sub-theme notes money never sleeps and so our boy Gordon has seemingly lost a step or two since he was king of the hill. The big boys grabbling all the dough are now seen as heroes not bums of the month. But their day is coming.
This one takes a few big curves away from the machinations of the Street and tries to deal with things on a more personal level. It seems that Gordon’s estranged daughter Winnie, played by Cary Mulligan, has a boyfriend/fiancé who is an up and coming, well, Gordon Grekko, working his ass off in a big investment house that is going under because it is carrying too much bad paper (and being undermined by a competitor investment house partner with a grudge). The boyfriend Jacob Moore, played by Shia LeBeouf, is a go-getter for sure and winds up meeting Gordon on a book tour (Gordon has written a gloom and doom book portending the impending financial meltdown) and they strike up a bargain. Jacob tries to work to get Winnie to meet him and he will see what he can do to push Jacob up the Wall Street food chain (and especially get some traction for his clean energy project-the wave of the future).
For a while it was no soap-Winnie is still resentful about how Gordon let her brother fall through the cracks with a drug addiction problem that took his life. But eventually she softens (as well as being proudly pregnant). Then Gordon pulls a classic Grekko-proving that an old con will always be an old con (artist or vict). He has a cool one hundred million stashed in Switzerland just waiting for Winnie to grab it. She doesn’t want it until Jacob talks her into using the dough to help finance the clean energy research. She does and signs for technical reasons the dough over to dear old dad. And he runs off and turns that nothing big one hundred million into a billion. Yeah, Gordon Grekko is back, the bad ass is in the saddle once again. But here is where the stir time or something plays-Gordon is worried about seeing his grandchild so he anonymously dumps the nothing big one hundred million on that research project. Nice touch. And they say Wall Street is just a big Ponzi scheme. Shame on them. But here is the big picture-those Grekkos are still in the saddle and who knows what they are up to now-no good for Main Street. Like I said I am not quite sure why Stone felt an urge to run this storyline again. What is needed is a plan to get rid of the bums.
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