MORAL HAZARD: a review of "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps"

"WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS"
Screenplay Written by Allen Loeb and Steven Schiff
Based upon characters created by Stanley Weiser and Oliver Stone
Directed by Oliver Stone
**1/2 (two and a half stars)

Generally, the idea of sequels tends to bore me. I have to admit first off that I didn’t always feel this way and it is also not a hard and fast cinematic rule I tend to hold. As I was becoming more enthralled with the experience of going to the movies, the idea of witnessing a subsequent installment featuring beloved characters was an unadulterated thrill. And besides, look at the sequels that I happened to grow up with. “Rocky II” (1979). “The Empire Strikes Back (1980). “Superman II” (1981). “Return Of the Jedi” (1983). Ah, the good ol’ days! But little did I know that films like those were an anomaly as far as sequels were concerned. As I grew older, and saw more and more movies, I then began to understand what many film critics tended to hang their hangs in pained disinterest about as so many of those movies were half (or less than half) of the movie the originals were. They represented a profound lack of the very originality and creative spark that made audiences fall in love with a certain collective of characters and their stories in the first place. At their very worst, these were films that were entirely unnecessary or as the great Roger Ebert explained in his definition for a movie sequel, it is nothing more than, “A filmed deal.”

In regards to “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps,” the latest exploration of American life from filmmaker Oliver Stone (and sequel to his “Wall Street” from 1987), I felt that here would be a sequel that potentially could be more than merely “necessary.” If Stone played his cards right, it would have the potential to capture a benchmark moment in our country’s collective history. After having sat through a screening, I have to say that while Stone did craft a well intentioned and honest morality tale, that nearly righteous passion that fuels most of his output was sorely lacking, making for an experience that was not much more than ho-hum.

Set in 2008, shortly before the stock market crash that placed America on the precipice of complete financial ruin, Shia LaBeouf energetically stars as Jacob Moore, a well-meaning Wall Street trader for the fictional Keller Zabel Investments, and protégé to the firm’s managing director Louis Zabel (Frank Langella). Like so many before him, Jacob is not immune to the allure of money and the life that can be bought with it. He lives in a swanky apartment with his grounded and passionately left-wing girlfriend, Winnie (Carey Mulligan), a writer for an underground, political blogsite/internet magazine. One morning, as he checks the morning’s stock numbers via laptop and television, while laying in bed, Jacob looks up to his TV and spots the image of the once mighty, now disgraced visage of Gordon Gekko (again played by the inimitable Michael Douglas). Released seven years earlier from serving an eight year prison sentence for tax evasion and insider trading, Gekko is now on the lecture and book tour circuit as he promotes a new financial cautionary tome entitled Is Greed Good? Jacob is mesmerized while Winnie is understandably disgusted as she is Gordon Gekko’s long estranged daughter!

As Jacob attempts to broker and finalize a mountainous investment deal to assist an alternative energy fusion research project run by the kindly Dr. Masters (Austin Pendleton), Keller Zabel is financially gutted and destroyed by Britton James (an excellent Josh Brolin), CEO of the rival (and fictional) firm, Churchill Schwartz. In an act of utter disillusion towards the changing and destructive tides in the financial industry, a distraught Louis Zabel commits suicide by stepping in front of an oncoming subway train. Desiring revenge, Jacob plots to bring Britton down to his knees but he needs the proper guidance and assistance to pull it off.

Jacob reaches out to charm the slithery Gordon Gekko in order to obtain his advice, counsel and tutelage as well as earn Gekko’s good graces for the impending marriage to his daughter. Gekko agrees as long as Jacob is able to chart a path where Gekko is able to return to Winnie’s high favor. Then, there is the matter of a secretive $100 million dollar trust fund fortune Gekko has laid aside for Winnie in a Swiss bank account. Once this fortune that finds its way to the center stage of the plot, Jacob truly begins to face his own moral crisis as he is confronted with the greed of his own open heartedly vengeful and selfish tactics that will ultimately compromise and darken his soul.

“Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” is the kind of handsomely mounted production that you would expect from a filmmaker of Oliver Stone’s caliber. It is a highly polished piece of work yet one with a soul and conscience as it honestly tackles our cultural decay created jointly by the ones for whom the word “enough” does not exist as well as from our very own hands for buying into a system designed to engulf us whole. It is a gorgeously looking film with fine crafted performances throughout and I must give special credit to the songs of David Byrne and Brian Eno, which wallpapers the film and provides it with a contemplative commentary as well as sonic connective tissue.

Again, Oliver Stone surprised me by not creating another fire and brimstone experience like much of his oeuvre. Perhaps, with age, he has purposefully made the decision to tone down his savagery or at least find more subtle ways to channel it into action. As with the more meditative films from his heyday (like 1993’s “Heaven And Earth” and the stunning, nearly Shakespearean epic of 1995’s “Nixon”) and recent fare (2006’s “World Trade Center” and 2008’s “W.”), Stone uses his camera more as a probe than flamethrower. Stone sublimely views the obscene, meaningless display of wealth with its massive and unappreciated collected works of art to the grotesque pulled plastic surgery abused faces of older women. It is during moments like these where “Wall Street:Money Never Sleeps” is at its strongest.

Michael Douglas is the film’s main event and he does not disappoint with a performance that is partially “lion in winter” with his luxurious slicked back grey mane while he also remains the baddest and greatest of the Great White sharks of the financial world. For this sequel, Douglas embodies a character that serves as more of an antihero than ruthless villain but he has not gone completely soft. Douglass discovers newfound layers with this character, who emerges from prison (along with the now comically enormous cell phone from the 80s) with absolutely no one to greet him on the outside. We are now able to view the irreparable human damage done within his own life and family at the expense and pursuit of money. Gordon Gekko is bruised, wounded, eclipsed by new financial Great White sharks like Britton James yet all the while, Gekko remains the sharpest and most fiendish man in the room as he patiently lays in wait for his time to strike. It is a remarkable performance and the film burst to vivid life every time he appears.

Yet, “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” does possess its fair share of problems. I felt that all of the film’s bubble motifs, placed to comment upon all of the financial bubbles doomed to burst, were overdone, making the film preachier than it ever needed to be.

I was also very disappointed with the utilization of Carey Mulligan, who does what she can in an extremely underwritten role. This was truly a shame as her character of Winnie Gekko certainly contained enough of a back-story as well as current status to potentially be a crucially compelling character for this particular story. Mulligan showed she more than has the goods in her luminous and Oscar nominated performance in last year’s “An Education,” yet this seemed to be a case when the filmmakers just didn’t really know what to do with her aside from making her the bland “girlfriend” as well as the film’s “moral conscience.” It just wasn’t enough for me. And frankly, if filmmakers do have the good fortune to obtain an actress like Carey Mulligan for their film, then it is owed to her to give her something to actually do!

My largest problem with the film is not one that derailed it by any means. It just made the film more lugubrious than necessary and in some ways, describes the problem in creating a film to carry on the weighty task of being a cultural touchstone. The original “Wall Street” seemed to become a defining statement for the 1980s in a more organic fashion. The phrase “Greed is good” truly took on its own life without any particular push from Stone and his creative team. However, in the case of this new film, is felt obvious to me that Stone was actively attempting to be that defining statement for our current decade and unfortunately, the film suffers under its own aspirations. Also, the original was aggressively urgent whereas this new film is more muted and elegiac. Not a bad thing and perhaps appropriate as, again, this film is a morality tale set during a period when our cultural and corporate morality seems bankrupt. But for a film that makes great pains to bemoan the moral hazards of the 21st century, and for us who know the reality, perhaps a more aggressive stance would have greatly aided the elegy.

As it stands, “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” is a bit of a sleepy and slightly predictable experience that is not a bad film in any way. It is more like Martin Scorsese’s “Shutter island" from earlier this year. "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" is a film with the finest of intentions and top shelf execution in front of and behind the cameras, yet ultimately did not add up to the lasting impact of an experience it hopefully wanted to be.