Wall Street: money

Did Citibank contribute production funds for Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps? The allusion to a well-known corporate advertising slogan might account for the subtitle given to the sequel to Oscar-winner Wall Street. Or maybe it's an in-joke by director Oliver Stone. Such irrelevant musing was provoked by the movie's product placements (starting in a big blatant way for Bulgari) and the necessity to ponder something more interesting while the movie unreeled itself.

Stone's 1987 original anti-capitalist saga accidentally glorified its villain, Gordon Gecko. Played with scene-chewing chutzpah and charm by Michael Douglas, he entered movie and finance industry immortality with three words, "Greed is good". Just as important in the modern morality tale was the relationship between an honest unionist father (Martin Sheen) and his money-seeking broker son (Charlie Sheen). The third key dramatic element was the deus ex machina who enables Gecko's downfall (Terence Stamp, as the very Brit angel of vengeance).

Why did Stone and Douglas agree to do a sequel? And do it so badly? The plot is ungainly: Gecko hits the big time again through a young broker (flimsy Shia LaBeouf) who's marrying his long-estranged daughter (ethereal Carey Mulligan), but the youngster's financier father-figure (weepy Frank Langella) has been driven to suicide by an uber-Gecko (eye-rolling Josh Brolin) who chomps on cigars even more masterfully than Gecko. Douglas is still a pleasure to watch (and wonder why he needed a credited "dialogue coach"); the rest of the cast is pitifully miscast. There's further embarrassment from watching veterans in cameo parts: Susan Sarandon (youngster's money-chasing ex-nurse mother), Eli Wallach (banking patriarch), Sheen Jr back to the future.

The screenplay was reportedly co-written by finance industry experts; much of it is an alphabet soup or lecture on fusion, of no dramatic interest. Stone seems to have been aware of the film's lack of vitality, as he added a waterfall of background music from Craig Armstrong and an extended CD-ful of songs from Brian Eno, David Byrne and others. Music even tinkles, irritatingly, during the initial speech by the re-appeared Gecko when he's hawking his how-to-get-rich manual to a fawning audience of finance industry whizkids.

The production tried to be news-worthy, leveraging (the inevitable word to use) itself on the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the zillion-dollar bail-outs, rip-offs and bonuses that gave Wall Street an even worse name than Gecko (an astute usage of the Javanese-inspired word for a lizard as a surname without any ethnic connotations).

Big bubbles float skywards at the movie's beginning and end, a possible tribute to or pastiche of Forrest Gump's leaf. Maybe the whole film is a pastiche, an in-joke by Stone that's as confused as his W seemed to be.

"In Greed We Trust", the animated end credits show on a dollar bill; they also show a dying tulip and, saddest of all, snapshots designed to hint at a further Wall Street sequel.

[The full context of the original "Greed" quotation is a reminder of how good the past Gecko was as a Hollywood creation: Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures, the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind and greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the U.S.A.]