Oliver Stone directs Wall Street-Money Never Sleeps 23 years after his 1987 hit Wall Street with new faces except for Gordon Gekko starring Michael Douglas plus; a brief guest appearance from his past. Gekko opens the film as he gathers his valuables, a mobile phone the size of a shoe-box and is released from serving eight years in prison for insider trading, a victimless crime. In the 1980s, Gekko’s classic line, “Greed is good” was sexy; it meant power at any price, an air of entitlement that made each of us hail him as a demigod on Wall Street. He smirked like The Grinch Who Stole Christmas with an arrogance that the audience not only liked, but ate it up. Fast-forward and Gekko’s past mantra became his catastrophic reality and ours. No one paid admission to witness the collapse and biggest government bailout in U.S. history during 2008 involving the Federal Reserve Bank, the U.S. Treasury, bloated hedge funds and steroid banking policies escalating the economic climate akin to when Pearl Harbor was attacked — that of fear and helplessness. Greed is no longer sexy; the behaviors on Wall Street are systemic in practice, a looming malignant bubble that can collapse at any moment causing global disease and world panic. The mother of all evil is speculation on Wall Street. Money is a bitch and she never sleeps!
Gekko is broke; prison has set him on a new path, a new “creed” if you will — of retribution, of retaliation and the ultimate chase to rise from the gallows of professional despair and personal ruin. He weaves his web of vendetta toward the nemesis responsible for his imprisonment, namely Josh Brolin as Bretton James. How you ask? Vis-à-vis his daughter, played by Carey Mulligan as Winnie Gekko and her significant other, Shia LaBeouf as Jacob Moore, who has his own ax to grind. Winnie wants nothing to do with her father. She’s building her own liberal based nonprofit Web site where she uses her distinct “Gekko like” barracuda tactics in a soft, protected, warm and fuzzy platform as she mourns the death of her drug addicted brother and her mother’s misfortune, and still blames her father for their demise. Winnie does hold a secret and Gekko assumes that she will honor his good will upon his release, but how can she follow-through with her deep-seated anger? The culmination targets the same indictment Gekko paid eight years for — insider trading that takes on many different faces from Main Street to Wall Street. And it’s as simple as a rumor about James that brings him to the edge. Does the desire for greed change or evolve, nope; and neither does the glee of retaliation.
This movie is not a sequel, but a continuation of the life cycle; it’s about relationships and intangible basic human needs that make us whole, even if an empire ensues in the process. In the end, it’s not really about the money; but the game between people. Is Bretton James really a moral hazard that takes money and is not held responsible for it? Does a tiger really change his stripes when Gekko says to James, “You stop telling lies about me and I’ll stop telling the truth about you?” Who’s calling the kettle black, as each is dedicated to their own self-fulfilling agendas? Then again, is the most valuable commodity time, or money and power or merely retribution, with a value that’s priceless?
