Boiler room

It's about time for a new Ben Younger movie. His debut feature as a writer-director, Boiler Room, made his name in 2000. Five years later, his second feature, Prime, starring Uma Thurman and Meryl Streep, gained some critics' respect as an above-average romcom focusing on the sub-genres of age difference, NYC and intellectual Jewish family relationships. Since then, he's directed one episode of a TV series. In the 2000-2005 period he only made a 16-minute short and two very shorts (2 minutes each).

Both his features were produced mainly by the Todd sisters (Jennifer and Suzanne), whose track record ranges from the sublime (another 2000 indie triumph with Chris Nolan's first US feature, Memento) to the profitably ridiculous (the three Austin Powers spoofs). Their guiding lights in the movie industry appear to have been Joel Silver and Mark Gordon.

Boiler Room may have got the production green light for the rookie Younger because it was a semi-autobiographical docudrama in the pattern of Oliver Stone's highly successful Wall Street. The single student son of a Jewish New York judge runs an illegal casino in his home, and switches to becoming a trainee stockbroker in a large "chop shop" out on Long Island. For its adrenalin-rushed young operators, an evening's entertainment can consist of a group watch of Gordon Gecko, whose dialogue they know and love verbatim.

The good Jewish boy learning to be a con man at the high-pressure (ie "boiler room") cold-call sales machine is a reflection of Sheen's role in Wall Street as the naive son of a good cop. In Younger's version, the judge-father has a clumsy emotional blockage with his son. His barely credible dialogue is handled well by Ron Rifkin, who went on to long-running TV successes (Alias and Brothers and Sisters).

The son's even less credible character and moral doubts are acceptable too, even though former child-actor Giovanni Ribisi looks too small, unattractive and not very Jewish. He's certainly not the one man on the crowded set of adolescent wannabees one would expect to win the eye and bed of sexy black receptionist Nia Long (who'd already reached her career peak, in TV's Fresh Prince). This movie could have been Ribisi's breakthrough, but his only relatively notable part since then was a minor one in Avatar.

Bigger names on the set were Ben Affleck, already an Oscar-winner for co-writing Good Will Hunting, and Scott Caan, the body-self-conscious son of star actor James. The best acting in the movie was delivered by Vin Diesel, who represents the "Italian" group of stockbrokers in intense competitive mode with the group of "Hebrews" led by Nicky Katt. Another former child-actor, Katt went on to make a living as a movie tough guy but his last role was an uncredited bit part in Dark Knight.

Where Are They Now? nostalgic questions were prompted by the sight of Diesel, whose charisma and sense of humour shine in this movie as they did later in the Fast and Furious and Chronicles of Riddick action franchises.

Much of his profane dialogue in Boiler Room, and that of other brokers delivering glib spiels and sly psychological gamesmanship, is a pleasure to listen to. Younger rightly includes a passing verbal tribute to Glengarry Glen Ross, David Mamet's devastating dramatic expose of the real estate business. He really had to, because he incorporated a similar tale of a cruelly conned young husband. Mamet's original figure is more credible and interesting, as was Stone's Wall Street; Younger had given himself challenging role models.