Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

When faced with an Oliver Stone film and a tag line that reads “Money Never Sleeps” one should not expect subtlety; and Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is no exception to this rule.  Oliver Stone’s most recent film is a mixture of archetypal characters, ostentatious sets, overly dramatic camera movement and superficial plot tropes.  It does however have a terrific soundtrack compiled David Byrne; that could not be more incongruous with the attempted dramatic gravity of the plot.

The year is 2001 and Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) is being released from prison after serving an eight-year sentence for racketeering, insider trading and securities fraud.  Though clearly older, less well groomed (his wings would have made Farrah Fawcett ashamed) and newly broke, little else about him has changed.  As a solitary figure at the prison gates, met by neither friend nor foe, we know that revenge and financial aspirations are afoot (this is Gordon Gekko we are talking about).  But that will have to wait.

Suddenly it is 2008 and we are standing at the precipice of the financial crisis that the film centers itself around.  Standing with us is the new face of Wall Street, Jake Moore (Shia LeBouf), a crafty trader whose skill and earnings remind us of a younger Gekko.  However his familial allegiance to both his mentor, Lou Zabel (Frank Langella) and girlfriend Winnie Gekko (Carey Mulligan) tell us he is too warm to be a shark in pinstripes; Gekko would never kiss his mentors bald head or his daughter Winnie.

This latter point is ultimately served (unconvincingly) to the audience as Gordon’s reasons for getting involved with Jake; in an effort to reconnect with his daughter. When Lou is driven to suicide by a rival mogul, Bretton James (Josh Brolin) Jake and Gordon team up for respective revenge (Jake against Bretton) and reconciliation (Gordon with Winnie) by employing a painfully obvious plot device of “trading” help with one for the other.  It is the world of financial transactions but sometimes using the lingo belies the shallow nature of the script.

At its heart Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps strives to be what Oliver Stone does best in his films.  Against the backdrop of a slice of Americana (be it football in Every Given Sunday or the political in W) Stone examines the themes of greed, love, hatred, and trust.  He contrasts the professional world that these individuals inhabit, full of projected machismo and image control with the personal worlds of unwieldy emotions by delving into the depths of what these characters are and represent. 

This is where Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps fails.  Based on archetypes and plot devices the personal world of the film consists of the superficial: Jake stating his desire for vengeance, Gekko stating his desire for his daughter and Winnie crying (all the time). Without a genuine view into the personal lives of these characters, we are forced to trust, at face value, the motivations stated by them.  And this is a Gordon Gekko world we are watching; the only idea trust that rings true is trust fund.

Stone attempts to hide this lack of character and motivation beneath a nearly incoherent jumble of financial jargon and sensationalized camera work.  These distractions make it near impossible to see when, if ever, the two worlds, personal and professional, influence each other. Ultimately the disconnect between the two plotlines strips the film of all emotional weight and wastes the amazing amount of talent brought to the table by Brolin, Douglas, LeBouf and Mulligan; restricting their abilities to the one dimensional characters written for them. They are simply lines on a page and like 2008 everything is heading down.

                                            Sam Broadwin