The big deal today was the long awaited sequel to the Eighties classic, Wall Street (whose motto ‘Greed is good,’ uttered by Michael Douglas in his Oscar-winning role as Gordon Gekko) entitled, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, directed by Oliver Stone.
This time Stone turns the spotlight on the banks and the hedge fund managers, pointing the finger at them and accusing them of creating the West’s recent financial meltdown. And he’s not wrong.
The story begins after Gekko has served eight years in prison for financial misdemeanors and fraud and in the film’s opening scenes catch him on his release scruffy, unkempt unshaven and re-claiming his chattels. Fast-forward to 2008, and Gekko has reformed and penned a best-seller (entitled Is Greed Good?).
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But tragedy strikes and Jacob’s bank crashes, his boss commits suicide and Jacob plots revenge against the nefarious Bretton James (Josh Brolin), a partner in a rival bank whose double dealing has precipitated the demise of his bank and his mentor’s death.
Not unlike all those shady financial deals, it all looks good on paper but it doesn’t quite add up. The film is a bit of a muddle not helped by all the financial jargon in the dialogue that confused the shit out of me.
Frankly, Stone doesn’t seem to know what he wants to say. On one hand, he berates the banking system, but on the other he seems to glorify Wall Street with a series of great glorious tracking shots.
At the premiere, meanwhile, the stars Douglas, La Beouf, Mulligan, Brolin and Stone turned up on the red carpet looking like a million dollars while the Press corps in Cannes plotted on trying to spend rather less than that at the bar.
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