Release date: April 23.
The cast: Shia LaBeouf, Michael Douglas, Charlie Sheen, Carey Mulligan, Josh Brolin, Frank Langella.
The pitch: Twenty-odd years after being jailed for insider trading, Wall Street giant Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) is back. This time, he enslists the help of a young trader (LaBeouf) to prepare for the financial meltdown.
The strapline: ‘Money Never Sleeps’, obviously…
The buzz: The original 1987 Wall Street is the best-known parable of the 1980s culture of financial greed and excess. With his “greed is good” ethos, Douglas’s Gekko was the ultimate personification of the selfish capitalist eventually brought low by his avarice. As a note of warning, it didn’t really work. The wizards of Wall Street kept on making dollars hand over fist through ever more highly leveraged deals, until the US economy came to a creaking standstill in 2008. That prompted Oliver Stone to return to Wall Street to sermonise to the next generation of privileged, unprincipled moneymen. Turned around in double quick time to er, capitalise on its timeliness, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps will no doubt put an entertaining spin on what is the defining issue of our time – the ethics of making money.
Reasons this could be good: After 2008’s dull, proselytising W., it’s good to see that Stone hasn’t lost his sense of humour. Two good sight gags – the mobile phone, and the limo – in ten seconds? Truly, we’re spoiled. It’s a smashing cast, and after a lengthy spell in self-imposed wilderness it’s exhilarating to see Douglas back in a part he can really chew up and spit out with relish. Don’t forget, it was Gekko that won him an Oscar and made him a star – before Wall Street he was mainly known for being a producer, not an actor.
Reasons this could be bad: Remember how let down you felt when Anthony Hopkins camped up Hannibal Lecter in Hannibal? Let’s just hope Douglas doesn’t pull a similar trick with Gekko, who is easily as seductive a villain. The first film dealt with the comparatively simple-to-explain crime of insider trading. How will Stone – never the most subtle filmmaker – fashion a thrilling plot out of the abuse of complex financial derivatives? And could someone please explain the appeal of Shia LaBeouf, because we don’t get it.
We think: The Great Financial Meltdown that began in the late noughties deserves a fitting celluloid epitaph, and it’s tempting to think this could be it. Stone’s father was a Wall Street broker during the Great Depression, so he knows this milieu better than most. Let’s just hope he manages to avoid the preachy, self-righteous tone that has afflicted his last couple of films, and lets the villainy of Manhattan’s greedy Gekko-ites speak for itself.
Music: Ricochet by Shiny Toy Guns. Bit grungey for our tastes, but sets up the mood.
Did you spot?: Charlie Sheen, who according to IMdB reprises his role as Bud, Gekko’s former protege (and fall guy)? We didn’t. Perhaps it’s just a cameo role for the newly disgraced Sheen sibling…
Odds of you seeing it: If Capitalism: A Love Story sounds too boring and Up In the Air too cheesy, then perhaps this will be your ideal recession-based cinema fix. And those of us who miss the Michael Douglas of old will be right there with you.
