There are those who describe the Eighties as the decade of greed, and justifiably so. Everything had to be bigger, bigger cars, bigger houses, bigger shoulder pads, and bigger hair. Of all the films that were released in the Eighties there was one that perfectly defined the attitude of the era, Oliver Stone’s Wall Street. The film starred Charlie Sheen as a young stockbroker whose greed for success is manipulated by Michael Douglas’ powerful Wall Street trader, Gordon Gekko. Stone had intended Gekko to be the ultimate capitalist villain but city traders embraced him as a hero, taking up his iconic mantra of “greed is good”. Twenty years later and the financial boom of the Eighties seems like a distant memory in today’s rapidly deteriorating economy, motivating Stone to bring back Gekko in Wall Street Money Never Sleeps, once again turning the magnifying glass on the greedy money men who got us into this mess.
This time round Charlie Sheen is replaced by Shia LeBeouf as the hero of the story. The Transformers star plays Jake Moore, a young, idealistic trader for a Wall Street investment company. When the bottom falls out of the market and his mentor falls under a train, Jake becomes obsessed with getting revenge on the C.E.O of the rival company he blames for his employers death. Meanwhile Gekko, who was last seen heading to prison for fraud, has served his time and is now seeking reconciliation with his estranged daughter Winnie, who just so happens to be Jake’s fiancé. As the economy begins to crash around them Gekko takes Jake under his wing, claiming that he will help him on his crusade in return for assistance in winning back his daughter, but can Gekko be trusted? It’s not long before Jake’s morals and relationship begin to crumble as he finds himself in a world where more is never enough no matter what the consequences.
The major problem with Money Never Sleeps is that it contains too many ideas that never really seem to come together. This is reflected in the look of the film, Wall Street was stylistically simplistic, yet its successor is full of distracting MTV split screen editing and convoluted graphics. Similarly the soundtrack, recorded by David Byrne and Brian Eno, just doesn’t fit and detracts from moments of drama. Without a doubt Douglas is the saving factor of the film, and it is great fun watching his manipulation of the characters around him. By contrast Shia LeBeouf seems completely out of his depth, it’s a rare thing to be able to say that someone is not as good as Charlie Sheen, but in this case it is true. It’s hard to say who this film is aimed at, it won’t hold the attention of the youth market and it’s too shallow for the art house. It doesn’t even work as an exposé, as the conspiracy obsessed Stone fails to offer any original thought on the circumstances that led to the stock market crash. Ultimately Wall Street Money Never Sleeps isn’t a bad film, it just isn’t a very good one either.
Review by Elliot Hyams
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