Wall Street (1987)
I finally got to watch Wall Street after hearing many friends mention it, and a few really praise it. So with expectations a little bit primed, I was underwhelmed by the opening minutes, and then further discouraged as it went, until by the end I was bored. Maybe the sweeping notion of a Wall Street made of day traders and pyramid schemers and run-of-the-mill corrupt young white collar criminals is old hat. Maybe this had meaning in the Reagan years when greed really did seem to be waved like a flag.
But maybe it's not such an amazing movie. It is filmed like a good, night time television series, though with a longer pulse to it (no commercials, oddly enough, given the theme). But it is brightly lit and functionally photographed. The acting is all over the place, but the lead, the younger Sheen, is just plain dull. His character, Bud Fox, is meant to be a hard driven risk-taker, conniving to see the top trader in town and wanting to succeed behind his little computer, but he's kind of an everyman instead, probably so we might sympathize with him. Just from his lack of energy, he drags the movie down.
Michael Douglas, however, pulls it up. He's his usual brash, sharp-voiced, arrogant, rich man (he seems to play parts that require expensive suits). Unlike his father, he doesn't do humble well, but his part as Gordon Gekko requires mostly hubris. And greed. The famous "Greed is Good" speech never actually has him say that--and if you find it and listen just to that moment in the movie, you might get a flavor for the whole thing, because he hesitates on just how to word it. The movie, as a whole, though never pausing in the kinetic sense, is one big hesitation. It lacks depth, and it lacks any reason that we should be compassionate.
Yes, the older Sheen shines (ouch, that was unintentional--Martin plays the father of the Charlie main character). The supporting cast is fair to middling. And the direction, whatever you think of Oliver Stone, is solid but uninspired. It is really the idea that drives the whole enterprise, and the idea is a linear, and predictable, one.
I finally got to watch Wall Street after hearing many friends mention it, and a few really praise it. So with expectations a little bit primed, I was underwhelmed by the opening minutes, and then further discouraged as it went, until by the end I was bored. Maybe the sweeping notion of a Wall Street made of day traders and pyramid schemers and run-of-the-mill corrupt young white collar criminals is old hat. Maybe this had meaning in the Reagan years when greed really did seem to be waved like a flag.
But maybe it's not such an amazing movie. It is filmed like a good, night time television series, though with a longer pulse to it (no commercials, oddly enough, given the theme). But it is brightly lit and functionally photographed. The acting is all over the place, but the lead, the younger Sheen, is just plain dull. His character, Bud Fox, is meant to be a hard driven risk-taker, conniving to see the top trader in town and wanting to succeed behind his little computer, but he's kind of an everyman instead, probably so we might sympathize with him. Just from his lack of energy, he drags the movie down.
Michael Douglas, however, pulls it up. He's his usual brash, sharp-voiced, arrogant, rich man (he seems to play parts that require expensive suits). Unlike his father, he doesn't do humble well, but his part as Gordon Gekko requires mostly hubris. And greed. The famous "Greed is Good" speech never actually has him say that--and if you find it and listen just to that moment in the movie, you might get a flavor for the whole thing, because he hesitates on just how to word it. The movie, as a whole, though never pausing in the kinetic sense, is one big hesitation. It lacks depth, and it lacks any reason that we should be compassionate.
Yes, the older Sheen shines (ouch, that was unintentional--Martin plays the father of the Charlie main character). The supporting cast is fair to middling. And the direction, whatever you think of Oliver Stone, is solid but uninspired. It is really the idea that drives the whole enterprise, and the idea is a linear, and predictable, one.