Lunch is for wimps (Wall Street (DVD))

Name: moronboy

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Product:	Wall Street (DVD)
Date:	30/07/00 (88 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fast, slick and urgent

Disadvantages: Bit of a misfire

Oliver Stone's most simplistic polemic, with the characters reduced to mere cyphers, and some of the performances so broad and emphatic that the message is lost. Charlie Sheen is Impressionable Kid, Michael Douglas is Charismatic Capitalist Demon, and Martin Sheen is Honest Working Man. Sheen Snr is Sheen Jnr's real father, Douglas his more attractive surrogate father. Sheen is tempted by the rewards of greed, and then realises that being decent is best.

And that's it. There's no real understanding of the financial system on show, despite the fact that Stone's father was a stock broker (the film is dedicated to him, and Hal Holbrook is on hand as an ageing trader with intergrity presumably based on Dad), just a simple minded attempt to beat you round the head with the message that GREED IS BAD. The problem is that Stone allows Douglas to be hugely attractive, and gives him all the best lines (the way in which the financial hustlers of 'Boiler Room' worship Douglas's character is based on fact). Greed does seem to be good if you get all the suits and possessions and energy and women on offer, and though Martin Sheen radiates integrity like a supernova, it's hard to imagine his greedy little bastard of a son giving up the clothes and apartment just to be A Good Person.

It's Stone's most sexist film (Daryl Hannah is a money-grabbing bitch with no soul, setting back the cause of feminism twenty years), and it seems at this distance to be more of a celebration of the brash eighties than anything else, an upmarket companion to Tom Cruise's loathsome 'Cocktail'. By way of compensation, Douglas more than earns his Oscar as the loathsome Gordon Gecko, and it's all very fast and exciting to watch.

Summary: