Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010)

A totally new take on the same course material as the original, this film is rooted in the present's economic climate, which is why it most likely exists. As something beleaguering greed and the economic crises of the current administration and the history of man to boot, this film doesn't feel completely kindred to the original. It possesses only the character of Gordon Gekko and the theme of money in American culture, but is not an extension of a further storyline. Instead it's a commentary on the 2008 economic downturn based on stock brokers leveraging mortgages and interest rates in CDCs for the average American. It's a lot of backtalk and shop talk between the different firms, the shady deals behind bailouts and what our system is truly made of. This would all have been more pleasurable, of course, if this didn't so mirror the former film in the way of dialogue and the same general outcomes for the "villain" of the story. Much stranger is the fact that Gekko is the only character from the original who puts in more than an appearance. He is a working character amongst whatever plot Shia LaBeouf follows; though why they put so much of this film on this one uneven character's shoulders I'll never know. It's slow, painfully so, and sadly the payoff at the ending is based on the human condition. Gekko throughout is painted as a reformed man who speaks of his former greed with modest embarrassment instead of his former envy. Just watching such a complex man from the first film bow down and become the lapdog to Shia LaBeouf was difficult to watch. Yes everything is building up, but to what? What is the true message to our watching audience? We already know greed is bad, made true in the first film, and this one doesn't directly shine a light on the true baddies of our generation except in passing, so really we're just watching the downfall of Josh Brolin's character (as a new kind of Gekko) without any care for his fate because he isn't built up like Gekko was in the original. Haphazard, intricate, and hard to follow or swallow, this nuanced drama had me happy I don't poke my nose into this terribly dangerous world.