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When I first moved to New York after college I spent a lot of time temping, and I temped pretty regularly for financial institutions. Once I spent three weeks working on this trading floor in a skyscraper near Central Park, which is not where trading floors are supposed to be, so maybe it wasn’t a very good trading floor. In any case, my job was to answer phones for these four dudes. Let’s call them, John, Tony, Dan, and Jon. When a call came in for any of them, I was supposed to stand up and shout their name. CAN YOU IMAGINE? WHAT A LIVING NIGHTMARE! Here I am, 22 years old, dressed like an asshole in my Banana Republic sale rack business casual clothing, standing up in an unfamiliar office and shouting people’s names. At first, I did not shout their names. I put the call on hold and walked over and said “Tony, you have a call on line 4.” They were like “Don’t come over here, bro, just shout my name out, bro.” Good grief. There was this guy who sat next to me who was very disdainful of me because he was a real employee and I was a fake employee, except that he did the exact same work as me, with the phone answering and the name shouting (although he WAS in charge of calling in everyone’s lunch order, so that was pretty important), and he was in his late 30s, and he spent his downtime talking loudly on the phone to his friends about his efforts to find cheap tickets to Broadway musicals on-line, so I was not impressed with his superiority. Also: there was a sign in the Mens’ Room–a Mens’ Room I will remind you that was used by financial traders earning, presumably, hundreds of thousands of dollars a year–that asked people to PLEASE FLUSH. The sign was really desperate and pleading. Clearly there was some kind of problem with flushing going on. At the end of three weeks, not a single person had bothered to ask much less learn my name. The point is: no offense to financial traders, but financial traders are fucking assholes.
Which brings us, finally, to Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps. What was THAT all about? (Besides assholes.)
The first Wall Street movie (1987) was really good. It dramatized the deregulation nightmare of the 1980s and the culture’s obsession with ostentatious financial wealth. It also depicted something that was relatively new. The rise of the Financial Trader as American Archetype and Portrait of Success didn’t exist prior to the 80s. So, it was timely. Wall Street 2 also tries to be timely. It opens with Gordon Gecko getting out of jail in October of 2001. 2001! October! 9/11! Wall Street! Prison! Mobile Phone Technologies! It’s confusing, actually. Because Shia LaBeouf is giving some bullshit voiceover about how mankind is the biggest bubble of all (relax, Agent Smith) but his character in 2001 would have been, what? 16? It’s also disorienting to spend five minutes in 2001 and then immediately fast-forward seven years. (Lindsay Robertson points out that this also makes it very weird when we catch up with him seven years later that he hasn’t seen a single person he knew since he was released from prison.) On top of that, the fact that Gordon Gecko seems so confused that no one is waiting for him when he gets out of jail (and accidentally thinks a limousine is for him, when in fact the limousine is for a black man, if you can even believe it, HOW MUCH THE WORLD HAS CHANGED!) seems odd. Don’t you think if you were a former billionaire getting out of prison that you would at least know one way or the other whether someone was coming to pick you up in a limousine? Don’t you think you’d have that information? And thus begins this sloppy movie’s stumbling walk down Whoops Lane.
Anyway, so, Shia LaBeouf is a hot young trader who just happens to be dating Gordon Gecko’s “liberal blogger” daughter, Carey Mulligan. Sure. The origins of their relationship are never explained, and it’s not even clear why they like each other other than that it IS nice to have someone to hug and take to work parties. When Shia LaBeouf’s childhood financial trading mentor is driven to bankruptcy and suicide, he decides to get revenge on Josh Brolin. Meanwhile, he makes friends with Gordon Gecko (after Gordon Gecko gives a painfully boring lecture in REAL TIME) even though his fiance hates her father and doesn’t want anything to do with him, to the point where he has to lie to her about meeting him. Blah blah blah. Boring/complicated scheming. A hilarious motorcycle race. Shia gets his revenge, kind of, but he is also double-reverse-betrayed by Gordon Gecko, who robs his own daughter of 100 million dollars that she didn’t even want and moves to London. GOTCHA! Shia and Carey break up even though she is pregnant. He sells his loft! Josh Brolin does go to jail eventually because A BLOG POST GOES VIRAL. And then eventually Gordon Gecko fixes everything by donating 100 million dollars to an energy company in California that Shia LaBeouf has some kind of weird crush on.
WHAT?
There are a lot of dumb things that make no sense in this movie. Like, well, all of it. I guess I don’t know that much about being a Wall Street trader, but I always thought that being a Wall Street trader was about monitoring the markets and making complicated financial transactions for profit. But somehow every trade that Shia LaBeouf makes just centers around getting his boyfriend, the whiny crybaby Fusion Scientist, a check for 100 million dollars. He really wants him to get that money, and apparently his job is just to try and get him that money? What does he even DO? I’m still not sure. I am glad, though, that the movie included BOTH a scene in which someone walks into an apartment looking for someone only to discover that the apartment has been cleaned out as if the person never even existed, and also a scene in which someone is waiting in someone else’s office in the dark and turns on the light. YOU PROBABLY DID NOT THINK THEY WERE GOING TO BE THERE, BUT THEN THEY WERE THERE. The only cliche it was missing was an “enhance” scene.
But the real problem with this movie is who cares about a bunch of incredibly wealthy assholes? Let me give you an example: the movie begins with and much of its motivation centers around the death of Louis Zabel (a Lehman Brothers effigy) whose company is destroyed, and who throws himself in front of a train. Shia is brought to tears and spends the rest of the movie attempting to get vengeance. Except, let’s not forget that Louis Zabel was the head of a financial trading company. HE WAS AN ASSHOLE! I’m not saying he wasn’t being nice to Shia LaBeouf when he gave him a 1.5 million dollar bonus check, but it’s literally impossible to become the head of a financial trading company without spending your entire life subsisting on a diet of the blood of the weak. Boo Hoo! It is so sad how that billionaire who spent his entire career stabbing people in the back and stealing more than his fair share of the world’s wealth through sneaky manipulation and bullying got sad and died! Whatever. Fucking WHATEVER.
And the movie’s conclusion is more of the same. We’re supposed to somehow be won over by the fact that Gordon Gecko donates 100 million dollars to an energy company? I’M NOT EVEN SURE WHAT THIS MOVIE IS TALKING ABOUT AT THIS POINT! For one thing, there is no way in which a 100 million dollar donation to an energy company would ever pull on my heartstrings, but even more important, even if I were to consider this turn of events through the warped lens of this stupid (and long!) movie, we already know that Gordon Gecko has turned his 100 million dollar theft into more than a billion dollars. So the stakes for him are basically zero. Donating 100 million dollars (out of a billion dollars) to Shia LaBeouf’s pet company, which has somehow now taken on some kind of bizarre, fucked up substitution for his actual relationship with the mother of his child, is literally the least he can do. But somehow this brings Shia and Carey back together? THEN WHY DID YOU BREAK UP?! WHERE ARE THE HUMAN BEINGS AND WHEN DID THE ROBOT CLOWNS TAKE OVER? If the primary conflict to resolve at the end of a movie that supposedly tracks one of the most damaging and far-reaching financial collapses in the history of the modern world is whether or not two 20-something millionaires (Shia’s loft was only worth 4.5 MILLION DOLLARS, is this movie a TRAGEDY?), then there are literally no stakes and we can all go home and read a magazine. At least in the original, Charlie Sheen had the decency to lose everything.
Hopefully this blog post goes viral and puts Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps in jail.
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I can’t wait to not see this movie!
Your description of the “real employee” in his late-30s reminded me of Ron and his quest to make the BIG DOG pizza.
Shia LaBeouf: Hollywood’s Go-To Man For Sequels Made Twenty Years Too Late.
Shia LaBeouf: Hollywood’s Go-To Man for Every Movie I Will Not See.
Shia LaBouf: former friend of this guy
BEANS?!
If not, I apologise for the lunatic outburst.
Are you referring to one Beans Baxter with that comment, “Michaela George”?
Nope, Beans Aranguren. A-doy.
Yes Beans, poor poor Beans.
Yes Beans!
Where is Beans’ Hollywood Career?
His face was too charismatic for Hollywood, I think.
Clearly, his insatiable lust for bacon has not subsided over the years.
Then shouldn’t he have starred in all the Star Wars prequels? (Thank you goodnight!)
Bing, I think the point of Wall Street is C.R.E.A.M.
I forgot to watch the catfish movie this weekend
NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! It’s really good Winwood, and buy the end you realize that it *is* real (or at least I did).
Do you mind, Principal SPOILER FUCK!!??
I didn’t SPOIL SHIT. It’s just that people have made a big deal over whether it is real or not and *personally* I felt like what goes down couldn’t have been acted. Besides, the directors have been claiming that its REAL ALL ALONG.
Buy! Sell! This Wall Street Movie has got into your head.
I saw “Catfish” this weekend and thought it was excellent.
I won’t spoiler, but you know, don’t read this if you haven’t seen the movie:
The movie really moved me, even though I was aware that various people in the movie and making the movie were lying to me. The tension between what was real and what wasn’t was really interesting, and tense, but at the heart of it, even suspecting throughout that I, like Nev, was being tricked on some level, I couldn’t help but be moved. And I liked that.
Great movie.
I think it tackled the problems of anonymity and identity in this “Facebook age” (*BARF*) in a very interesting nuanced way. While “The Social Network” is about Facebook, this movie is about its effect on people, which is vastly more interesting.
Having someone to hug and take to work parties is basically all I’m looking for in life. Living the dream, people.
FUNNY STORY.
This last Friday, I went with someone to an art opening, because they knew someone who was friends with the artist, etc. The art was good, there was some sort of delicious Spanish ham, etc. But the thing is, while at the party, I met a gentleman who, I later found out, on Wikipedia, was about 1/2 of the original inspiration for Gordon Gekko. He was very nice, given that we were only introduced and he is a billionaire and he literally could have shot me, right then and there, and probably gotten away with it, but it was difficult to be like, oh. This guy, in his previous career as a corporate raider (apparently THE corporate raider) put thousands of people out of work in the 1980s. Like, he signed a piece of paper, and a guy got a pink slip, and that guy didn’t have a job any more- not even because that guy was doing a bad job, or his company was doing a bad job, but because selling the company’s assets made the gentleman I met more money in the short term. And at first I think of that stuff as sort of evil, but then I don’t even know anymore.
Addendum: Basically by choosing to use my own name as my user name on this and other sites takes away a lot of the anonymity of the internet, and so I am sort of worried about offending a billionaire, who could Do A Lot For Us, so nobody tell.
What is this “anonymity” you speak of? And how are Margaret and Joy doing? Are you still making short films?
Stalko. DEFINITELY Stalko.
Sounds like you’re talking about Carl Icahn. How dangerous could he……………….
[> ATDT1,443,#######]… [> NO CARRIER]
so is your name Mark Popham or Markpop Ham?
So many people must have to download a blog for it to result in jail time for someone.
is that the guy that play’s Lane’s dad on Mad Men last night?
I did not watch this movie, but I did watch Never Let Me Go this weekend. I think I made a wise Carey Mulligan-related decision.
Really good right? I love future-past dystopias.
I thought it was so good. I almost wish I could afford an iPad so I could have shown the rest of the audience the James Franck Pie gif ™
I seriously have to repress the urge to scream out “Elizabeth Taylor!” every time I see one of those dogs. I live on the UWS, it happens OFTEN.
How about being smacked in the face by all those REAL bubbles and other stupid metaphors?
I get that it’s difficult to intelligibly convey the burst of the sub prime market and the collapse of many financial institutions to the laypeople, but COME ON we have REAL brains.
Why did he need to take his shirt off first? I’m confused.
That’s Oliver Stone for ya.
Back and to the left.
I had the same question. Maybe that’s his thing. “Don’t mess with Greg, he takes his shirt off before he hits you”.
to avoid blood splatter?
this is mesmerizing. I’ve watched it for two minutes. what is it? and he slaps the wrong guy!
Something I found filed under “spit.” It’s the gif that keeps on gifing.
HA Gifing. I like your wordplay! Keep it up!
Perhaps reciting this rancid script is to blame for his throat cancer.
I’m upvoting you with the benefit of the doubt, in the hopes this is a Hitchens-related reference….
This is a joke at the expense of the script-writers, not Michael Douglas, monsters, relax.
I’ve got a picture of radiation in my wallet guys, it’s cool.
Amazing.
Not to be “that guy (mainly because I am a girl),” but Gordon Gecko has a son in Wall Street. What’s this daughter business about?
Hmmm
Wall Street 2: 2 Street 2 Tranny or
Wall Street 2: Son 2 Daughter
That’s one of the reasons Carey “Sally Sparrow” Gekko is so resentful of her father. SPOILER ALERT! Rudy, her brother died of an overdose while Gordon was in jail.
Sally Sparrow! Someone else who thinks of her that way! Oscar-nominated indie darling, pfft.
*nerd fistbump*
I work as an admin for a financial company right now (thank you very much, theatre degree) and there is also a toilet flushing problem here too, Gabe And I mean really? You earn 500K a year and you can’t flush a toilet or do you just expect everyone else to admire your 500K shits?
Anyways, I have no desire to see this movie simply because it reminds me of the dreadful people i spend my days with. Seriously, if NYC was Tatooine, this place would be Mos Eisley.
Oh right, like the guy in the $5000 suit is going to flush the toilet. COME ON!!
If you eat a robot clown for breakfast, you tell jokes all day but they’re in binary.
#ididn’tseethisfilmsoi’mfocredtocommentonaminisculedetailofthearticle
True story: I had a mild-mannered and hilarious roommate who went to work on Wall Street because he was a financial genius, but they made him do cold calls, and when he was polite in the early weeks, telling prospects, “Okay, well, keep an eye on these stocks that I think are going up, and I’ll call you back in 6 months, and we’ll talk again,” his boss threatened to fire him. He was supposed to shout, “DOES YOUR WIFE HAVE YOUR BALLS IN A JAR OR ARE YOU A REAL MAN” and stuff like that. His boss golfed in the office, hitting golfballs with a driver into a tarp, and would demand new guys stand in front of the tarp and dodge if they were under their quotas. But the boss came to like my friend and took him out to lunch one day about 3 months in, and on the way they met a homeless guy who asked for money. So the boss said, “You can have all the change in my pocket…” and he took out about $4 in coins and the homeless guy’s eyes lit up like it was a huge treasure, and then the boss said, “…if you work for it!” and he hurled the money into an empty lot behind a razor wire fence. Then the boss and my friend laughed and laughed and laughed and went to lunch. My friend quit 2 weeks later, saying, “I genuinely thought that was hilarious. I was becoming a bad person.”
omg, that is so accurate seriously.
Was your roommate Giovanni Ribisi in the movie “Boiler Room?”
No, but when that movie came out a few years later I was like, “Whoa,” because the whole scene where Giovanni is trained to bully people into parting with their savings was an almost exact match for reality as relayed to me via roommate. You’d have said “Whoa,” too, instead of what you probably said, and what without that roommate I definitely would have said: “This movie is kind of stupid and I do not believe this movie as far as I can throw it, and I kind of want to throw it.”
Remember a long time ago when Da Cake Eatur was still a person here and we were trying to think of a tagline for this movie and his suggestion was “hello well come to da streets. da wall streets”?
Yeah.
Rad tag line
What was with that old guy and the whistling?
Great review Gabe. But I think the best past about this post was the link to Lindsay’s review. I miiisssss her on Videogum
never forget
I work for a billion dollar fashion company, in the corporate offices, and not only do people forget to flush, they also pee all over the toilet seats. But, you know, they’re rich so it’s okay.
I once worked in an office where a woman would wash her hands, pee, and then leave the restroom. Dyslexic much?
Why touch your important privates with unclean hands?
Also, back in art school, there was a kid who insisted he had the 23rd WORST diagnosed case of dyslexia in the United States. Not only could he not prove this, he also had all of us musing whether it was the 23rd or the 32nd worst case.
The point is she touched her hooha and didn’t wash her hands again.
Well who better to gauge the cleanliness of her hooha post-toilet business? I’m just presupposing here. In an ideal world? Robots.
I’m just a firm believer of trying to keep all your business clean. Washing hands afterwards is definitely the smart play. I was merely thinking about how I wouldn’t want to handle my business without washing my hands if say, I had just eaten bbq or something. Pre-wash, take care of business, post-wash.
She knew that I was waiting outside ready to LICK her hands clean.
The reality of the financial collapse was actually extremely boring and tedious. However, I’m sure a movie following a Nomi Prins character unraveling hard maths and SEC paperwork would have been more entertaining than watching Rand cultists race motorcycles and not really get their comeuppance.
I wish all the Randies would be taken by the sea. Watch the market of the water regulate itself into drowning them.
Clever! I’m clever!
“the world is vampire”.
-Billy and The Corgis
was that song in this movie? I bet it was.
It sounds like what was possibly intended as schadenfreude turned out to just be stupidly-aggrandizing, and the only pain enjoyed was that of the audience by Oliver Stone .
Oh boy, I’ll bet any time you yelled “JON!” or “JOHN!,” they both thought they had a call. Hilarity ensued!
I liked this movie a little more than Gabe. Not by much. Possibly because I re-watched the original Wall Street and it reminded me that Oliver Stone is the least subtle director in the history of cinema. The original has Charlie Sheen walking out to his fancy balcony overlooking the city and saying (out loud) “who am i?”. So it would be a lie to say I was surprised by the random shots of bubbles and dominoes falling. The acting was pretty good and there were a few powerful scenes (the one between Mulligan and Douglas outside of the party was pretty well done). My biggest problem was with the above mentioned ending, which tries to redeem Gekko in the lamest way possible.
i have absolutely no interest in this movie,i think that guy who plays gecko & is married to zeta-jones is far too old-looking to be in any movie. But I love reading reviews of really terrible movies,in this case,Dustin Rowles of Pajiba wrote a gem.
maybe there’s something i don’t understand about traders on WALL STREET, but why was Shia Laboef’s original office on 53rd and 3rd??