The Gray Lady ran a story yesterday on Oliver Stone‘s return to Wall Street (both physical and literal). The piece confirms the starry cast (Michael Douglas, Shia LaBeouf, Carey Mulligan, Frank Langella, Josh Brolin, and Susan Sarandon) and Stone mentions how some people (assholes) were inspired to head to Wall Street back in the eighties after seeing “Wall Street” and how those same people “didn’t get it.” The piece also mentions Stone and Douglas recently having had dinner with an ex-country-club-con, Samuel D. Waksal (ImClone, did five years). And LaBeouf got to attend a cocktail party with Stone organized by econ prof Nouriel Roubini (totally getting a small cameo in return).
Because we’re such huge Shia LaBeouf freaks (huge), we read the “Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps“ script just to see how hot a script has to be to nab the Beouf and, coincidentally, how hot an idea has to be to get Oliver Stone to make his first sequel. Turns out, Allan Loeb‘s re-telling of the recent financial fuck-all through the eyes of a few new imaginary characters and one old famous one (Gecko, Michael Douglas) colors inside the same superficial, preachy lines as its predecessor, but like it’s antecedent, it might be fun to watch if Stone and company obfuscate the obvious a bit better than they do in the draft we read (and fire LaBeouf, though that’s probably too late).
You’re all Pretty Much F*cked is what ex-white-collar-con, Gordon Gecko tells a packed house at Columbia when our hero, Jacob Moore (LaBeouf), meets him for the first time. Screenwriter Loeb (Bryan Burrow has a story credit and Steven Schiff may have rewritten) has spun a fictional hedge fund into last year’s history of events on the real Wall Street. The fake fund is given the Bear Sterns overnight stock plummet treatment. We ride the melt alongside Jacob who loves his boss-father-figure, loves the ‘fuck-you money (it’s called that in the script),’ but doesn’t love the humanity-starved a-holes he has to work with. Sure he loves to fly in their jets, stay in their palace-sized hotel rooms, but doesn’t like them (shit’s hard on his morals and junk). He’s also just asked Gecko’s daughter to marry him.
Gecko Drops His First, “New Greed“ Speech on Page 17 and yeah he even references the long speech that he gave in “Wall Street” the original wherein he said, ‘Greed is good.”
In the new script, Gecko has plenty of I-told-you-so monologues that Douglas will no doubt deliver in the same pause-heavy, throaty way he did in the original. In “Wall Street,” Gecko was a slick rich sleazy shit who you never trusted. These days, Gecko has supposedly come full circle. He’s on Charlie Rose, he has a book (Moral Hazard: Why Wall Street Has Finally Gone Too Far), and is criticizing the unregulated wild west nature of the market at every turn. For a small while, the new, reformed Gecko is kinda fun. You dig and trust him guilt-free for at least an act and a half before the script (spoilerville!) turns him back (seriously spoiler, don’t finish this sentence) into a surprise villain. You’ll have to mouse over to read that.
“The Bull Market‘s Killing My Sex Life,“ one analyst says to our hero Jacob at a strip club, having just made a joke about the rising cost of high-priced call-girls. The script makes it easy for us to like Jacob and hate the guys (and they’re just that, all men) that have money coming out of their asses. When Jacob’s boss (Frank Langella) spoiler: commits suicide, Jacob vows to take down the evil hedge fund that helped taint the health of the stock of his former employer (stock tainting, it’s so on). To do this, Jacob seeks Gecko’s guidance. Gecko agrees, drops a monologue, then makes a trade; he’ll help Jacob take down Bretton Woods (evil hedge fund manager Josh Brolin), while Jacob helps him heal a riff between him and his daughter, Winnie (Carey Mulligan from this year’s stunning “An Education“).
The film’s main villain is a hedge fund manager, did you hear us say that? He’s got a serious hard-on for risk, classical music, and rare dogs (so hot). Too bad he comes across exactly like the Gecko from the first “Wall Street;” rich, pompous, well-dressed, evil, and rich. And Brenton Woods has the text-book villain blind-spot. He’s just so crazy with risk-addiction that he’ll hire on an unknown kid-advisor, trust him with the biggest deal of his life, watch him fail, then keep trusting him. He has a few good lines, but for the most part, Woods is dimension-less and more of a device that gives Jacob and Gecko a reason to work together.
What essentially worked for “Wall Street” was the character of Gordon Gecko and the the story of a young, financial go-getter listening to the advice of an evil mentor, doing lots of wrong, then doing right. “Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps” has Gecko and a new young go-getter, but the young one never truly loses himself in the wrong in an enjoyable way like Charlie Sheen‘s Bud Fox (who cameos as a guest on a financial talk show in the background of a scene), he’s too much of a do-gooder at heart and there’s no real threat of him ever going over to the dark side with a smile. He’s hip to the trappings of coin and is always above it. Yawn. Sure he gets caught up in revenge and its costs him, but we never fear that he’s ever in danger of dropping some serious fuck you money on a Tesla or $1000 burger or anything. In the end, this is a vehicle to get Gecko back onscreen. Along the way, screenwriter Loeb sexes up the old world of high-finance and addresses the changes that have occurred, but never goes deeper than a Gecko speech or hedge fund manager losing his shit because he can’t get his investments to turn.
Where was this script 18 months ago when it would have been a tad ballsier to say all the negative things it says about credit default swaps and evil hedge fund managers? To have tried to implicate white-shirts in world-class crimes of the century a year and a half ago would have felt much more like old-school Oliver Stone (pre “Doors,” pre crap). Having lived through the recent financial fuck-all and heard every last econo-pundit eviscerating Wall Street for its lack of morality, one more account of just how bad things are isn’t nearly as interesting now as it could have been then, before the shit hit the fan. – Andrew Hart