Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps/Wall Street 2/Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps (2010) - Stone's sequel is an entertaining spectacle

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2 Film Excess nominations:

Best Cinematography: Rodrigo Prieto (lost to Wally Phister for Inception)
Best Music: Craig Armstrong (lost to Treme S1)

 

Michael Douglas and Shia LeBeouf both look tight in expensive suits on this poster for Oliver Stone's Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

 

Gordon Gekko is released from Sin Sing prison to a greedier world, he says. The home loan bubble, green energy and insider trade are ingredients in the drama that follows between him, his daughter and her fiancée.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, written by Allan Loeb (The Switch (2010)) and Stephen Schiff (True Crime (1999)) and directed by great New-Yorker filmmaker Oliver Stone (Snowden (2016)), is the sequel to Wall Street (1987). It circles around the bubbles of financial systems (that's been around for for centuries) and the topical issue of bail-outs, and is exciting and visually flashy in a concept of looking expensive, telling a story of the very rich, which works like a charm. - No expense is spared, it appears.

The entertainment value of Money Never Sleeps is high, helped along by an ensemble cast with Michael Douglas (The Jewel of the Nile (1985)), Shia LaBeouf (American Honey (2016)), Frank Langella (Stardom (2000)), Carey Mulligan (The Greatest (2009)), Charlie Sheen (Wall Street), Josh Brolin (Milk (2008)) and, in his last feature before his death in 2014, Eli Wallach (Eye of the Cat/Attenti al Buffone (1975)) is first-rate and truly a treasure in the film. LaBeouf and Mulligan are good enough actors, - and make a damn cute couple, - that Douglas gets the necessary counterweight.  

Rodrigo Prieto's (The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)) cinematography lifts the spectacle that the film is, and the score by Craig Armstrong (The Great Gatsby (2013)), featuring songs by Brian Eno and David Byrne, is outstanding, especially if you (like my) are a fan of those artists in the first place. 

The ending of the film drags out some and seems to testify to a process where the filmmaker maybe couldn't really make up his mind about how to properly end this saga. Stone seems to have attempted to make the financial crisis '08 movie here, which I must quietly remark failed, however. That came a few years later, in The Big Short (2015). Still, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is recommendable and a respectable sequel.

 

Related posts:

 

Oliver Stone: Snowden (2016) - Stone's inflammatory political thriller is a powerful must-see

2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]

2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]

2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

Born on the Fourth of July (1989) or, Beautiful Struggle

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 70 mil. $

Box office: 134.7 mil. $ 

= Big flop

[Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps premiered May 14 (Cannes) and runs 133 minutes. Stone was unwilling to make a sequel until the 2008 financial crisis came and changed his mind. Much research was done by Stone, Loeb, LaBeouf and Douglas to make the film accurate. Filming took place in New York and in Dubai from September - November 2009. Sheen reportedly couldn't remember his lines on his one day of shooting. Douglas was, according to LaBeouf, an "open wound" on set due to his son being arrested for drug trafficking prior to filming. LaBeouf has also elaborated that Stone at times would order him to get drunk in a bar before filming to get him into an aggressive mindset. The film opened #1 to a 19 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it stayed in the top 5 for a total of just 2 weeks and grossed 52.4 mil. $ (38.9 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were China with 7.1 mil. $ (5.3 %) and Spain with 6.7 mil. $ (5 %). The film was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor (Douglas), which it didn't win. It made in excess of 15.5 mil. $ in addition on home video sales in North America alone, which, if added to the theatrical gross, would change the film's status to simply 'flop'. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is rotten at 55 % with a 5.9 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps?