By Travis Johnson
In Jodie Foster’s fourth film as director, Lee Gates (George Clooney), a television stock market pundit, is taken hostage by an irate viewer (Jack O’Connell) who lost everything on a bad tip. Things clearly devolve quickly, as can be seen in the above clip.
Co-starring Julia Roberts and Giancarlo Esposito, Money Monster is the latest in a long string of socially conscious hostage dramas, stretching from Dog Day Afternoon to John Q. It wins points for invoking the increasingly toxic stock market as the agent of social ill, and it certainly looks great, but the question is whether it will land its thematic punches without coming across as preachy or naive. The benchmark for this kind of thing is Network, and nothing is as good as Network, but maybe Money Monster can earn the hallowed label “almost as good as Network“. We’ll find out when it hits our screens on June 2, 2016.
