Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010)

Written by Allan Loeb & Stephen Schiff
Directed by Oliver Stone

Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) walks out of prison in the opening of Wall Street Money Never Sleeps walking away from everything he knew to be true when he went in. Greed, as evidenced by Enron, BP, ComStock, and all those companies, is no longer as good as it once was. After walking out the prison gates, Gordon knows this is a new world, and to his surprise, he's alone in it.

Snap to Jacob Moore (Shia LeBeouf) the 21 century wall streeter, young, flashy, and too smart for his own damn good, he has learned from one of the best, Louis Zabel (Frank Langella) who runs a corporate banking firm on Wall Street. When vicious rumors send the company into a flurry, Zabel must come to terms with his failure, and in the process, he sets Jake free, giving him a very large bonus and telling him to spend it, metaphorically letting him know his days of earning through Zabel's company are nearing a close.

Wall Street shark Bretton James (Josh Brolin) is the man who started the vicious rumors, that eventually lead to the demise of Zabel's bank, and the purchase of the company for dollars on the hundred it used to be worth.

Jacob's not all business, however, his beautiful girlfriend Winnie Gekko (Carey Mulligan) gives him something to stay sane for, and an interesting counterpoint to his fast paced Wall Street career. When he suspects Winnie's life is for the worse because of the actions of her father, he decided to track Gordo down, try to mend the broken fences of the Gekko family, because he believes it will really bring the family he is trying to start together.

Upon meeting the man, Jacob can see the flaws of the man, but in the end, he respects the raw power, the bravado, and comes to replace his surrogate father Zabel with Gordon Gekko, despite his fiance's wishes.

What I liked about this film is the world has sequelized itself. The 2008 economic crisis is a direct correlation to the 80's wall street boom, and the same people that are being bought out, bailed out, and sometimes put into jail are indeed the same people that made this country the richest in the world.

Not only has Wall Street come full circle, so has the US. Staring at money to be made, we all wonder how to do it morally, without incident, but as we watch our financial leaders run the country into ruin, the theme hits home, Greed is indeed good, if you can get away with it.

This all begins a revenge plot involving Jacob, Gordon, and Bretton James, as James is the real man who had Gekko put away for 12 years, one of the longest sentences for white collar crime on record, not Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) who does make a nice little cameo. Unfortunate that he's seemingly only willing to play himself anymore, but it was fun nonetheless.

To me, the plot was not the most important part of the film, which I suppose would be the problem for a lot of critics. The fact that the movie sacrifices plot in trade for thematic metaphors is the most revolutionary part of this film in my opinion, a straight sequel about only the characters would have been a bit boring, hokey, and contrived. Which, sadly, the very end falls prey to these typical Hollywood conventions, but the overall message was strong enough for me to overlook this silly mistake.

While the plot does get a bit messy, it's the simple working of Wall Street that this movie explores that make it, in my opinion, a bit better than the original. Looking at excess through the eyes of a broken man, and looking forward at a failing economy through the eyes of a young man, I can't imagine more poignant or honest points of view on the matter of money in America.

9.0/10