Film Review Wall Street Money Never Sleeps 2010

Wall Street – Money Never Sleeps a dubious sequel comes 23 years after Oliver Stone’s 1987 film Wall Street back when, “Greed [was] is good,” and now in 2010, “It seems greed is legal.” Also, to state the obvious mobile phones don’t require semi-trailers to carry the battery. The mobile phone circa 1987 was an obvious narrative temporal reconciler (NTR), which dissected the fat from two decades of Wall Street obesity, a creeping barrage of consumer technology and the political morph from war with the Evil Empire to a Lord of the Rings type offensive against an Axis of Evil. Okay, now that we have that settled that let’s talk about the film. How’s this for simple. You’ll either love WSMNS or Hate it.

There is in my opinion no requirement to have seen WS1987 to enjoy Ollie Stone’s latest money-grubber. Both stories traverse the same territory, greed, manipulation, the rise and fall of an evil capitalist dog and redemption (with a cash bonus) for the moral self-righteous with plans to save the world and not from an Evil Empire or an Axis of Evil but from the Bogeyman, the damaged environment (insert boring theme; evil and greedy suits). There’s nothing terribly wrong with the film as Stone has created an entertaining film that requires your attention in order to engage you. It’s a film that relies heavily on its twists, turns and surprises to keep up with the shenanigans of Wall Street’s market jocks.

Gordon Gekko (Gekkonidae belong to the family of small to average sized lizards-wikipedia) gets out of jail after serving eight years or thirteen years if as Gekko says, one counts the five years in and out of court. From there it’s pretty much a revenge story without explosions. Oliver Stone peppers his film with candy tidbits designed to inspire humour and of course irony. The visual narrative is padded with Ramboesques ‘financial market’ action sequence montages where Oliver Stone plugs himself and others gazing into ubiquitous falling stock graphics and idiotic screaming as the drama of life electrifies the market. It’s fairly pedestrian stuff; yet, paradoxically there is much to like about this film and sitting around dissecting meaning from such a symbolically strong subject dries up any chance of enjoyment. If you let go of the superficiality portrayed and concentrate on the heightened cartoonish, albeit dark, narrative WSMNS2010 will entertain you. For me WSMNS2010 demonstrates that even though flat screen monitors and wafer thin mobile phones enhance contemporary greed and market exploitation nothing has actually changed.

Yet, deep in its narrative there resonates a great story with meaning and power. This concept for me is brilliantly conceived by the cartoonish evil and greedy money baron, Bretton James, played by Josh Brolin, who in a fit of rage destroys his original painting of Goya’s most paranoid but brilliant creations, Saturn Devouring His Son. It is a grandiose metaphor, which if one is so inclined encapsulates WSMNS2010’s story, themes and mood of this awkward and interesting film.

I paid to see this movie.

reviewed by Gary Daly