"Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" Review - Written by Anthony T

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

Year: 2010

Director: Oliver Stone

Stars: Michael Douglas, Shia LaBeouf, Carey Mulligan

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Running Time: 136 Mins

It’s been twenty-three years since Oliver Stone went into the inside world of stock trading and corruption in the financial sector in “Wall Street“. Now fast forward to 2010 when the financial sector has come under more scrutiny than ever before, Oliver Stone revisits one of the classic films, with the long awaited sequel “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps”.

The sequel takes place where the global economy is on the brink of completely collapsing. Soon a young wall street trader (Shis LaBeouf) must form a relationship with a disgraced former corporate raider Gorden Gekko (Michael Douglas), when he thinks that someone had something to do with his mentor suicide. Soon he realizes that Gekko want use to help repair his relationship with his daughter (Carey Mulligan) and return to dominates that he once had on Wall Street. Frank Langella, Susan Sarandon and Josh Brolin costar.

Going into “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps”, I was hoping that the film wouldn’t be like the original and be enjoyable, as it’s hard to follow up a film that is a true classic. Thankfully, this movie holds its own like the original.

For all the controversy that Oliver Stone endures with most of his films, he always still finds a way to make his films entertaining. One of the things that made “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” a very entertaining film, the way that Stone does a good job keeping the film moving. I noticed in some reviews that the film moved at a sluggish pace. I didn’t get a sense of that here. To Stone’s credit, he doesn’t make you fall asleep especially in the parts that Douglas is not on screen. He directs at a pace, so that you don’t get too confuse with all the Wall Street jargon that goes on. By doing that, it doesn’t get too complicated ot the point that you lose track with everything that’s going on. Another thing that Stone does well, the was he handles the acting. There’s an old saying, acting helps a movie that is good, great. It’s true here. Stone does a very good job directing the acting aspects here considering that Shia LaBeouf is the film’s lead. I’m not a big LaBeouf fan considering that I sat through a mediocre Transformers film and two horrible films (Transformers 2 and Indiana Jones IV) and remember saying that he can’t act for nothing. Well, it was probably the films that he was in, because I admit that he was very good here. Some of it maybe was the fact that he’s working with a accomplish director, but he shows that he can make a character interesting and entertaining given the right role. He also does a good job holding his own in the scenes that he’s in with Douglas, as they was chemistry that helps move the film along. Speaking of Michael Douglas, there’s no Wall Street movie without him and his character. He does it again with Gordon Gekko. He always makes the character very entertaining considering that the character is in a dark place in the beginning of the film. I like how Douglas adapts the changes that the character is going through, as you don’t get the Gordon Gekko from the first film, until midway through the second half. It’s the way that Douglas plays the character, which makes you forget the slimiest of the character for most of the first half.

The screenplay written by Allan Loeb and Stephen Schiff does a good job improving on the original. One of the things that I liked about it, it doesn’t try to be like the first film. They do that by focusing the story with the current economic times and various subplots instead of turning this into the Gordon Gekko show, which could have easily been considering how popular the character is. The writers also do a good job developing the various subplots. I liked how the writers spend the time to develop everything in this film. I liked how they handled everything from Gordon Gekko’s struggle to repair his relationship with his daughter to him struggling with life after prison. It made the various plots interesting and that’s because they fully developed to the point that you care about everything that goes on.

This was very entertaining sequel to a classic film, as the lead performances is what makes this film very good. “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” is an entertaining drama that keeps your interest to the point that fans of the original will enjoy.

Review Rating: Five Stars