Wall Street - Money Never Sleeps_______________________________________



Wall Street - Money Never Sleeps
2010
Michael Douglas, Shia LeBeouf, Carey Mulligan

Known as Wall Street, Money Never Sleeps, it should also add, “but some movie patrons probably have”.  There were moments of good acting from the leads, and neat little moments of remembrance for those of us who liked Wall Street 1, but mostly Oliver Stone didn’t have it on this one.  Should have saved us all a lot of time and money and did something else.  The story is there, yes, and the conflict is there to build a good story from, certainly, but the delivery is weak, bad actually. 

If not for the effervescence and attractiveness of our 2 young heroes, Shia LeBeouf and Carey Mulligan, this would have been unwatchable.  The editing was off in timing, too long on scenes that should have been cut, and vice versa.  And the whole special scene-changing, cinema shot, “hey I’m doing retro like Taranteno” thing just didn’t work for this film.  Not to mention that most of it was just unbelievable.

I didn’t buy it when Josh Brolin (not good casting for this part anyway) takes Shia on a man-jousting motorbike ride during the financial crisis to have the whole “mentor” talk scene, and then fires him.  I especially didn’t buy Michael Douglas walking back into the young couple's lives while they’re walking together home and then purchasing back his fatherhood with a $100 million gift, and they KISS of all things.  Uh... no, sorry.  I didn’t buy that our good guy went to the bad guy and actually accepted a job, ever.  There was very little believable about this film.  I especially didn’t like the opening sequence where Shia is on his bike in downtown Manhattan and there’s the split screen thing going on and an attempt at being fast-paced and racy and getting us all pumped like some attempt at teen adrenaline surge.  Bleh.

I didn’t even like the cinematography.  Too much horizontal movement and pixellating.  Bad lighting on some interiors, on and on…..

Ok, this is one movie that's getting only a half star from me, and that half star comes at a great expense.  The only scene I liked was the expensive interior of the huge gala party with all that money floating around.  That was well shot and paced nicely, and got the plot going forward.  That’s it.  So be forewarned, unless you’re just dying to know what happened to Gordon Gecko after he gets out of prison, you’re much better off going to see MegaMind.  What a blast!  Read that review of mine next.

1/2 star barely

Agitatus