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Men In Black 3

It’s not a sequel that needed to be made, but thanks to the charm of its leads and a tone that harks back to the wit and humour of the original, it’s a pretty enjoyable trip.

Bel Ami

The excellent female support cast saves this patchy effort, which is let down by its leading man and a flat screenplay.

The Dictator

A disappointing, often repulsive and mean-spirited mess of a film with seemingly only one real criterion on its agenda: to shock and offend.

The Woman In Black

Packed with atmosphere, this old-fashioned but deftly told ghost story delivers ample chills and thrills.

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Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (Film)

by Erin Free | September 20, 2010 16:23 | Edited September 20, 2010 16:24

While a rock solid piece of entertainment, this may have been something special if the focus had been shifted to Gordon Gekko.

The belated sequel is a tough gig. Just ask Francis Ford Coppola, whose solid but admittedly inferior sixteen-years-later The Godfather: Part III was excoriated by critics with a rare fervour, and pilloried merely for, well, existing. Heading into similar territory is iconoclastic director Oliver Stone, who returns to one of his most successful and iconic films with Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.

 

When Wall Street was released in 1987, it introduced outsiders to the highly insular and singularly cut throat world of stock trading and high finance. 23 years later, that world no longer holds the kind of mystique that it once did, and Stone fails to really add anything new in terms of the recent Global Financial Crisis. He does, however, bring back the brilliant Michael Douglas as ruthless financial tycoon Gordon Gekko, and for fans of the original film, that will be enough to warrant a cinema visit.

 

Unfortunately, Stone revisits his original film's plot structure, with Gekko again cast as the Mephistophelean figure hovering over a young trader (a strong Shia LaBeouf). The problem is that this time, it's Gekko that we really want to see. The film literally crackles and courses when he's on screen, and when Gekko tries to reconnect with his estranged daughter, Winnie (Carey Mulligan in the film's other standout performance), Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps hits on a The Wrestler-style emotional resonance.

 

Its central plot involving LaBeouf's entanglement with a financial heavy hitter (the nicely sneering Josh Brolin) just can't get close to the excitement that Gordon Gekko generates, even though he's a far less flamboyant figure here. Douglas is terrific in his signature role, and if Stone had switched the focus back onto Gordon Gekko, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps could have been something truly special, rather than just the rock solid piece of entertainment that it is.