Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

ordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) gave us the famous slogan in the ’87 film, Wall Street—“Greed, for lack of a better word, is good”—and found an entire generation of followers. He then went to jail for financial misdemeanours. In part II, he returns to the world that had made a virtue of his scheming ways and turned him into a hero. Now he is alone and carrying his demons along—a dead son and an estranged daughter (Carey Mulligan) who blames him for her brother’s death. But celebration of greed still stays by his side. He comes back to write a book, Is Greed Good, where he argues that it isn’t just good but legal. And he speaks ever so effectively to the ‘Ninja’ generation, which has no income, no jobs, no assets, specially when he says: “Money is the bitch that never sleeps”. Quite obviously, his philosophy of greed holds. Wall Street II plants the much celebrated anti-hero Gekko squarely in the centre of the economic meltdown. Things in the financial world are as unscrupulous and deceptive as Gekko had represented. Perhaps even more. For company, he has Moore (Shia La Beouf), his son-in-law-to-be and protégé. Moore himself is getting over the horrific suicide of his mentor Zabel (Langela) after his firm went under and he holds rival James (Josh Brolin) responsible for Zabel’s collapse. Moore’s mother (Susan Sarandon) has moved on from being a nurse to dabbling in real estate and he himself has a dream project—an alternative energy programme. The film’s depictions of the innards of the business world and financial systems are either too tame or too jargon-ridden to hold your interest. Besides, the personal stories take over the narrative and turn the film into a family melodrama, a bad one. Part of the problem is that despite the Gekko magic behind him, Douglas is not given full play. It’s LaBeouf who takes over with a lengthier and more sympathetic role. But he’s too callow to carry it off convincingly. Sarandon plays to the gallery but Brolin makes the biggest impact. Worst off is Mulligan, ever so lovely and vulnerable, but has an apology of an appearance. She should have turned this one down.