Wall Street is a mess, a morass, a snarl of contradictions large and small — a magnet for envy and indignation, fear and worship. Why should “Wall Street” be any different? The full title of Oliver Stone’s hectic new chapter in the Gordon Gekko cycle — a conventional sequel that is also a corrective, a parody and a sly act of auto-homage — is “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps,” and the movie has an insomniac restlessness that is by turns thrilling and enervating. It is as volatile as the Dow Jones on a day of seesaw, high-volume trading, as Mr. Stone and the screenwriters (Allan Loeb and Stephen Schiff) scramble to capture the cacophonous cultural rhythms of right now, not so long ago and some vaguely recollected bygone age when things were different. Evoking most directly those clammy, vertiginous weeks in the late summer and early fall of 2008, when the much-prophesied Crisis of Capitalism appeared to be at hand, “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” displays a grandiose ambition appropriate to its subject. In other words, Mr. Stone, never much for modesty, subtlety or the careful calculation of risk, has written a much bigger check than he could ever hope to cash. The real story of modern financial calamity is so enormous, so intricate and so confusing that any fictional distillation of it is likely to fall short and ring false, and even casual readers of “The Big Short” by Michael Lewis or the business section of The New York Times will find factual nits to pick with the new “Wall Street.” But there are also moments of astonishing insight, and a sweeping sense of moral drama that feels true in spite of inaccuracies and implausibilities. This movie is by turns brilliant and dumb, naïve and wise, nowhere near good enough and something close to great. If the film were a college course it would be Economics for Poets. Money is not really Mr. Stone’s theme. In itself it is too abstract, too cold and impersonal for his romantic, Hollywood-Shakespearean sensibility. His best movies, the first “Wall Street” among them, are preoccupied with the more primal matter of power and its corollaries — honor, loyalty, hubris and disgrace. In the person of Gordon Gekko, played both times with leonine bombast and reptilian cunning by Michael Douglas, Mr. Stone has conceived one of the definitive heroic villains of modern pop culture. John Milton, a dutiful Christian seeking to justify the ways of God to men back in the 17th century, made Satan the most vivid and interesting character in “Paradise Lost,” so much so that, according to William Blake, Milton was “of the Devil’s party without knowing it.” Similarly, Mr. Stone, a heterodox, occasionally hyperbolic leftist, has conjured a capitalist bad guy whose dynamism and charisma — whose relish at the sheer, ruthless fun of predation — leaves a much deeper impression than his duplicity or his greed. Back in 1987, “Wall Street” may have been intended as a cautionary tale, but it has also always been an irresistible advertisement for the excess it condemns. In any case, Gekko’s appearance at the beginning of “Money Never Sleeps” — on his way out of prison in 2001, where he has finished an 8-year stretch — is welcome. Surely, if anyone can give us a good angle on the madness of the present, it would be this guy. Most of the action takes places seven years later, when Gekko has reclaimed a share of public attention with a book that takes a harshly and presciently critical view of the state of the markets. Among his fans is a young investment banker named Jake Moore (the always wired Shia LaBeouf), who also happens to be living with Gekko’s estranged daughter, Winnie (the always understated Carey Mulligan). To this little knot of drama — will father and child reconcile? Will young Jake fall under the malign sway of his would-be mentor? Can a lizard change its spots? — the filmmakers add many more. An Oliver Stone hero is often torn between two paternal figures (Charlie Sheen in both “Platoon” and the first “Wall Street,” for instance), and so Jake is long on mentors, turning to Gekko after the death of the benevolent old-school broker (Frank Langella) who had been like a father to him. And since Gekko has been on ice all these years, another seductive villain, more in keeping with the times, is required, perhaps to evoke Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs or Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase in the way that Gekko in his prime recalled Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken. So Josh Brolin, who was the best thing in Mr. Stone’s curiously restrained “W,” rides in, elegantly coiffed and tailored, as Bretton James, a new snake in the garden of finance. James is at once smoother and more vulgar than Gekko was back in the ’80s, an indication of how the image of wealth has mutated in the past quarter-century. He shares Gekko’s taste for ostentation — showing off his Goya painting and his Ducati motorcycle, wooing Jake with visions of the good life — which may also be a reflection of Mr. Stone’s aesthetic inclinations. Visual extravagance has always been among this director’s calling cards, and here he aims his eye squarely at the spots where material excess intersects with genuine beauty. Manhattan has rarely looked so persuasively gorgeous. Mr. Stone and the director of photography, Rodrigo Prieto, turn the city into a dazzling jewel box — sometimes literally, as when the camera, gliding through a gala soiree, surveys the sparkly, dangly earrings of the women in attendance, alighting finally on the plain and tasteful pearl studs Ms. Mulligan is wearing. Her character works at what is described as “a lefty Web site,” and its function in the plot is more wishful than persuasive. And the narrative sprawls and buckles as “Money Never Sleeps” tries to find a dramatic shape that might be both comprehensive and coherent. The story lines that worked in the first “Wall Street” no longer seem available. There is no real struggle for the young man’s soul, since Jake’s business aggression is never really at odds with his niceness. The vendettas simmering among the various titans of the Street seem like shabby Mafia stuff when measured against the scale of ruin these petty rivalries are meant to explain. Even ostensibly real values, as opposed to the notional riches confected by credit default swaps and other derivatives, are expressed in monetary terms. To the question “What went wrong?” the film offers an answer that is both irrefutable and unsatisfying: human nature. And yet something vital here works. There are, come to think of it, a lot of little things: buoyant yet haunting songs sung by David Byrne, whose vocal timbre brings back the ’80s all by itself; deliciously overdone supporting performances, especially from Vanessa Ferlito as one of Jake’s rivalrous colleagues, and Susan Sarandon, as his mother; a smattering of real-life characters evoked, impersonated or dragged onto the set. And, above all, a mood that is anxious, despairing, angry and yet exuberant. Oliver Stone is not the man to explain Wall Street, or to stoke public indignation at its crimes. But no one else could turn it into a show like “Wall Street.” |
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