Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps on DVD

I found Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps the sequel to the 1987 Oliver Stone film, a surprisingly strong continuity piece but ultimately a less than realized drama. Let me explain.

Oliver Stone created a great cinema tapestry in the original film, bringing to life one of the great protagonists of the 1980's in Gordon Gekko played by Michael Douglas to a perfect pitch. Playing off a character powerhouse like Martin Sheen and casting recent movie star Charlie Sheen as the titular Hero, Bud Fox. The audience in that first flick was bought in by the back story and the kept riveted with the tension playing off the key players.

This sequel, again stars Douglas as Gekko and brings in age appropriate Shia LaBeouf as Jake Moore, the moral compass. What Stone did so well in the sequel is very much create a back story of real time. Gecko's arrest at the end of the first film takes years to go to trial and though the sequel is two decades in the future, he spent only eight years in jail, getting out seven years before the film takes place. At no time as the movie unfolds do you find out what he during that time.

Jake is a Wall Street broker planning to marry Gekko's daughter Winnie who is estranged from her father. While Gekko makes the media rounds discussing his best selling book and stumping that the financial future of this country is bleak with his trademark Svengali statements, Jakes seeks to reconcile the family. Using the financial crisis of 2008 as a background, Gekko begins to play a financial chess game with Jake like he did with Bud Fox and creates animosity between businessmen, family and friends. Interesting sidenote, Sheen reprises his role of Fox for a scene and its really good.

While Douglas, LeBeouf, Carey Mulligan as Winnie Gekko and even Josh Brolin as the main baddy all deliver really good acting, the main flaw of the movie lies on the director. In the end Stone, a well received director, doesn't create the same tension that made the first movie so good. Wall Street 2 is essentially a cerebral drama and the tension and pace are just not there to give this movie the magic of the first. Maybe it is because the financial crisis still exists and the movie is more documentary fiction than movie script. Perhaps much like real life, its hard for the public to grasp $800 Billion bail outs.    

The Proposal: Netflix streaming

I have a love it, leave it mentality with Netflix streaming. The love it is that they have thousands of movies for free streaming online. The leave it is that most are not great recently released movies. I have been putting this concept to the test the last several weeks and while the vast majority of movies I personally rate under 3-stars there are gems to be found. Once such gem is a rom-com, The Proposal, starring Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds.

Margaret (Bullock) is a unlikeable but effective editor at a large book publisher in New York. Her Canadian visa is revoked by the INS for a minor issue and rather than lose her job she establishes a series of lies that end with her blackmailing her loyal, overworked, never appreciated assistant Andrew (Reynolds) to marry her. To perpetuate this lie, the two travel from Margaret's ritzy life of east coast elite to Andrews hometown of Sitka, Alaska in order to let the family know they are getting married and Margaret can learn enough about Andrew to pass an INS exam. Andrew based on his job, knows everything about her.

Andrews family, played by Craig T. Nelson, Mary Steenburgen and Betty White, along with a large supporting cast of friends, creates a wonderful background for Bullocks Margaret to in essence, 'Not judge a book by its cover".  Along the way Margaret remembers why family and connectivity is so important and begins to unshackle herself from the single purpose life she has created for herself and Andrew begins to see how if he follows his personal demons he may lose himself as she has.

Pairing real life friends Reynolds and Bullock in a rom-com is true gold. Bullock plays very much against type cast yet she finds a way to display her known physical humor in a bathroom scene shared with a dog and a spirit dance with Betty White. Of course Bullock is beautiful and each scene plays to that trait, but the humor is in release of the bonds placed she has placed around the character. Reynolds continues to excel at playing any type, having just watched Chaos Theory, (also a great find on Netflix Streaming) Reynolds proves he can be make even non-action movies guy friendly.

Very much enjoyed this movie.