BEFORE: What started out as a Michael Douglas chain has rapidly turned into a treatise on questionable morals - and I expect that trend to continue tonight.
THE PLOT: Now out of prison but still disgraced by his peers, Gordon Gekko works his future son-in-law, an idealistic stock broker, when he sees an opportunity to take down a Wall Street enemy and rebuild his empire.
AFTER: It's an updated look at what goes on behind the scenes at financial trading companies, but even with all I've read in the news, it's a world that I know very little about. There are nods here to the collapses of top financial firms just a couple years ago, prompted by credit swaps, leveraging (still not sure what that is), and plain old greed. I'm not sure, but some of that stuff feels a little tacked on here, not just as a take on current events, but as a way of injecting some morality and blame for our double-dip recession.
But as a movie, it's all about consistency - or at least, it should be. Oh, characters can change over the course of time, but it has to be warranted and justified. For Gordon Gekko to say "Greed is good" in the original film, then spend a few years in prison and then warn of impending fiscal collapse, it seems like the character might have undergone a genuine epiphany, and not just because we know that he's right. But then to have him turn around and go back to his own ways, it seems like an inconsistent message - greed was good, then greed was bad, now it's good again?
Unless that's really who he is, underneath it all, a cold-hearted snake. If so, then that is a form of consistency, however disappointing it may be. Just when we think he might have learned something and seen the error in his ways, he reverts to form. Does he really believe that time is actually the greatest commodity, or is that just more lip service?
There are plenty of other inconsistencies as well - spreading false rumors about another company is bad. Unless a good character does it, which makes it OK? He's only doing it for revenge, not profit - is that bad, or good? Come on, movie, be consistent!
Some of the plot here also deals with types of energy investment - and our hero pitches a new clean form of fusion, so that's good, right? Or wait, isn't solar the good one? But is he pitching it because it's green (clean), or because it's green (profitable)? Yes. So why does everyone else in the movie still interested in off-shore drilling? Didn't they get the memo?
The film is set in 2008, so one has to wonder about the effect of two more recent events - 1) the BP oil spill, and its effect on the marketplace, and 2) the collapse of Solyndra, a solar firm that was central to the president's new energy plan, but seems to have gone the way of Enron.
But really, this film is not about energy - they could have just as easily be trading shares in a car company, food company, or a widget company. It's about getting revenge while getting back on top. Gekko also tries to re-connect with his daughter through her fiancé, who he (sort of) takes under his wing. Or was he playing him too?
I'm not sure this did much more than continue the original story - it's hard to say for sure if it advanced it much, though.
NITPICK POINT: OK, I can see how someone might mispronounce the word "piranha" - and I was also bothered by a character mispronouncing "Antarctica" by leaving out the first "C". It's wrong, but a lot of people say it that way. But who mispronounces the word "Satan"? Someone in this film said it like "satin", and that's just weird.
Also starring Shia LaBeouf (last seen in "New York, I Love You"), Carey Mulligan (last seen in "Public Enemies"), Josh Brolin (last seen in "True Grit"), Frank Langella (last seen in "The Ninth Gate"), Eli Wallach (last seen in "The Misfits"), Susan Sarandon (last seen in "The Lovely Bones"), Austin Pendleton, with cameos from Charlie Sheen (last seen in "The Rookie"), Sylvia Miles, Warren Buffett, Graydon Carter, Maria Bartiromo.
RATING: 3 out of 10 bottles of champagne
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