Don’t expect the sequel to be to be nearly as good as the original. It’s not. The film held my interest for its more than two hours but, other than a cameo, I didn’t have a very good time watching it.
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (Michael Douglas, Shia LeBeouf, Carey Mulligan, Josh Brolin, Eli Wallach, Susan Sarandon, Frank Langella) – Probably the most anticipated film of the year, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps reunites director Oliver Stone with Michael Douglas. Douglas, whose Gordon Gekko was one of the most memorable characters of the past three decades, reassumes that role as a seemingly more sentimental character albeit just as ruthless. As the film opens, Gekko is being released from jail, the inevitable consequence of his exposure at the end of the original Wall Street. No one is there to pick him up, punctuating his isolation from society and from the family we didn’t know he had. It turns out he has a daughter, Winnie (played by Oscar nominee Carey Mulligan), who is living with her lover, a Wall Street energy stock expert, Jake, played by Shia LaBoeuf. (Let’s face it, he is the hottest young actor in Hollywood, having played in period pieces like The Greatest Game Ever Played, action flicks like Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull, thrillers like Disturbia and Eagle Eye and historical pics like Bobby.) He is generally believable here as a young, intensely loyal and ethical Wall Street deal maker whose mentor commits suicide amidst the 2008 market crash. Jake and Winnie are a cute couple much in love. She runs her own Internet newsletter while he is obsessed with the Street and Winnie.
In the five years after his release from prison, Gekko has written a book about the evils of greed (Is Greed Good?) and made a modest comeback as a result, hitting the speaker circuit and signing autographs at Borders (this is a perfect example of product placement). Jake is fascinated by Gekko, his rise and fall not to mention that this guy is about to be his father-in-law. Gekko sees Jake as his ticket to renewing his relationship with Winnie, who loathes her father for the obvious reasons and a few more. As Jake gets drawn to Gekko and the two bond, we know something more is happening. In fact, the audience figures it out way before Jake. And that is one of the faults of the new Wall Street. We’re way ahead of the film. There is a bad guy, played by Josh Brolin, who apparently helped bring Gekko down and is now tight with the head of the New York Federal Reserve Bank. He also is the guy who brought down Jake’s firm and his mentor.
Thus, Money Never Sleeps is a story of revenge, right? Or is it about a changed Gekko? Or is Gekko still the evil emperor? Or is it a love story (after all, LeBeouf and Mulligan get most of the screen time)? Or is it the education of Jake, another young maverick in the mold of Bud Fox (the Charlie Sheen character in the original)?
Stone, who never saw an event without a conspiracy, also co-wrote this sequel, which is hardly half the movie Wall Street was. There are too many characters and too many contrived stories. Witness the presence of Susan Sarandon (who just played Douglas’ wife in Solitary Man) as Jake’s mother, a nurse turned would–be realtor who relies on Jake to bail her out during the housing crisis that started the financial meltdown. Why do we need her character or her story? In many ways, this film would be considered a mess if it didn’t have its “all-star” cast with its “all-star” director. Stone is clearly a master of storytelling, and this film has wonderful aerial photography and great graphics. But he also succumbs to hokey techniques like a ghost vision of Jake’s mentor, Lou Zabel (Frank Langella in a wonderful role).
A sequel to Wall Street was a good idea; the execution not so much.