I'm a fan of Oliver Stone's original "Wall Street". The story grabbed me, and the worthwhile performances by Michael Douglas, Charlie Sheen, Martin Sheen, Hal Holbrook and Terence Stamp were phenomenal. But I never really wanted a sequel to the film. I didn't think we really needed one. So when it was announced that 20th Century Fox was actually making a sequel over 20 year later, I just shrugged. I couldn't muster any enthusiasm for it.
So why the hell did I see the sequel? In short, because I was bored, and didn't have anything better to do on a Sunday afternoon. That's how shit like this happens.
So 1987's "Wall Street" ended with Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) going to the pokey. No, I guess it didn't. His protégé-turned-nemesis Bud Fox (Chuck Sheen) wore a wire and got Gordon to say some pretty incriminating things on tape, which he then turned over to the feds in exchange for leniency in his own impending securities fraud (and insider trading!) trial.
Bud was determined that if he was going to the big house, then dammit, his old pal Gordy was, too. And that's where we left everyone's favorite soulless, cigar-chomping douchebag for 23 years, until 20th Century Fox lured Oliver Stone back to direct the sequel.
You see, Stone hasn't had anything approaching a hit film since 1999's "Any Given Sunday", and some would argue that he hasn't made a "great" film since either "Natural Born Killers" in 1994, or "JFK" in 1991, depending on who you ask. And after the dismal failure that was "Alexander" (which I actually enjoyed), and the mediocre "World Trade Center", maybe Oliver Stone thought that making a sequel to his 1987 hit would suddenly be relevant in these tough economic times.
Or maybe he's just desperate. Who the hell knows?
"Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" opens way back in the year 2001, with Gordon Gekko's release from prison after an 8 year sentence. Considering the original film took place in 1987, that means Gekko stayed out of prison until 1993. Damn, the wheels of justice turn slowly, don't they?
A limo pulls up in front of the prison, and Gekko has the temerity to believe that the limo is for him. How cute. No, the sweet ride is actually for some other dude who got out of the slammer on the same day. So now poor Gordy is left alone in front of prison, with nobody coming to pick him up. Doesn't that just break your heart?
Cut to: 7 years later. Wait, what? Yes! The story just decides to skip over the story of Gordon Gekko trying to put his life back together outside of prison, and drops us in the delightful apartment shared by Jake and Winnie, two crazy kids just trying to make it work in a world gone mad. Jake is a trader for an investment firm called Keller Zabel, and Winnie does... I think she writes for a non-profit green tech website, or something. I don't really give a shit.
Jake's watching a story about Gordon Gekko on TV. Gekko got bored since we last saw him, and decided to write a book called "Is Greed Good?" And now he's all over the boob tube talking about his brilliant literary work. Jake watches the news story with the dumb grin of an obese child watching his doting mother pull a fresh apple pie out of the oven. I think I'm trying to say that Jake wants to suck Gordon's Gekko.
Winnie bursts in, snatches the remote, turns off the TV, and throws it across the room. The remote, not the TV. She doesn't like seeing Gekko on TV, because she hates her father. That's right, Shia LaBeouf is boning the offspring of Michael Douglas and Sean Young. Considering her genetic stock, the fact that she grew up to resemble a slightly deformed clone of Katie Holmes with a bowlcut is rather disappointing.
Gekko must have conceived this darling child before he went to jail, because in "Wall Street", he only had one kid, and that kid had a penis. For a while during this movie, I thought I was going insane, or perhaps the writers were idiots who forgot that Gordon Gekko only had a son in the first movie. Then I thought maybe "Winnie" was actually Rudy Gekko, who got a sex change later in life and changed his/her first name. But no, we're told that poor Rudy eventually became a junkie and overdosed on some heroin, or crack, or whatever, because his dad was a convict asshole and boo hoo hoo. That's why Winnie hates her old man, I suppose. Because I guess Gordon hooked his kid up with some of his high-end Manhattan dealers before he was sent away.
Keller Zabel shits the bed, because the entire economy is on the verge of collapse, and Frank Langella tries to negotiate a bailout. Josh Brolin steps in, gives Langella the finger, and presents a ludicously cheap counter-offer to buy-out the firm. Langella accepts, wanders around like a confused old man, then jumps in front of a subway train. Somewhere, Josh Brolin laughs maniacally.
You see, Brolin is the head of a rival firm that hit the skids several years earlier. When he came to Langella's firm, asking for a bailout, Langella told Brolin to shove his bailout up his ass, and go ask his new stepmother for the money. But Josh Brolin got pissed off and saved his own firm without Skeletor's help, and now he's on top of the world. So Brolin's really just paying it forward.
Jake is distraught, because Frank Langella was like a father to him, or some shit. Winnie gives him a big hug, and he feels better.
I will now recap the rest of the plot in one really long run-on sentence, because I am already sick of talking about this movie.
Jake meets Gordon Gekko, they become best pals, Josh Brolin offers Jake a job at his firm, Jake accepts because he wants to go deep undercover and fuck Brolin's shit up from the inside like a tapeworm, Gekko uses Jake to get closer to his estranged daughter, the economy dies of a broken heart, Jake and Brolin have a big bike race, the ghost of Skeletor pops up, Brolin does something to piss off Jake involving fusion technology, Jake quits, Gordon tells Jake that he set up a trust in his daughter's name in Switzerland worth 100 million dollars, and that he would give Jake that money to save his wacky scientist pal's fusion research company, Jake talks Winnie into getting the money from Switzerland, Gordon gets the money and fucks off with it to go play God with other people's money in England, Winnie being pregnant and angry, kicks Jake to the curb, and he flies over to the UK to have it out with Gordon, shows him an ultrasound video of his unborn grandson, but Gordon tells Jake to hit the bricks because he's an asshole, Jake does some digging back in NYC and finds some dirt on Brolin, giving it to Winnie so that she can publish it on the web and sink Brolin's career, she does and Brolin takes a fall, Eli Wallach's reanimated corpse shows up and whistles, Brolin's firm comes crawling back to Gordon Gekko, and they all take turns sucking his dick because he's awesome, Jake and Winnie get back together, Gordon swoops in with 100 million bucks and saves the wacky scientist's company, and the film ends with a big party and everybody's fucking happy.
God, I don't like this fucking movie. I tried, I really tried. But this shit just didn't work for me. Gordon Gekko is a supporting player in this movie, which focuses on the boring lives of Shia LaBeouf and Carey Mulligan. Josh Brolin doesn't bring anything to the table as the moustache-twirling villain, and Frank Langella just looks like an old man struggling with dementia who got lost and wandered onto a film set. Michael Douglas is fine in the role (for the most part), but he simply doesn't have enough screen time.
And what's this bullshit about Josh Brolin being the real cause of Gordon Gekko's 8 years of incarceration? We all thought Bud Fox was the guy who screwed Gekko, but no, it was Josh Brolin, the guy we never even fucking met in the first film! He's the sleazy scumbag who sold out Gekko and got him sent to prison, not Bud Fox! That asshole's small potatoes. Fuck that.
This is a serious problem, in my opinion. Charlie Sheen actually shows up as Bud Fox for a cameo in the film, and it did nothing but remind me of a much better movie called "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" that exists in a parallel dimension. When Gordon comes across his old pal Bud at a party, we find out that Bud finally became the soulless, money-obsessed dick his father was always worried he would become, and that he actually sold off Bluestar Airlines, the company that Bud swam through a world of shit to save in the first film.
This scene should have been the seed of a better sequel. A film where Gordon Gekko gets out of prison and tries to start over. He finds out that Bud Fox managed to avoid jail time for his part in the events of the original film, and that he's essentially the new "Gordon Gekko" on the street. So Gekko sets his sights on taking down his old protégé and rebuilding his own empire in the process. He could try to reconcile with his estranged wife and son (no daughter) while he wrestles with the fact that while Bud Fox is a monster of sorts, he's a monster that Gekko himself essentially created. And yes, the story could still be set against the backdrop of the economic collapse of 2008.
You could even throw in Shia LaBeouf as an idealistic young trader who Gekko uses as his soldier in the field against his nemesis Bud Fox. Gekko could position himself as the man behind-the-scenes while LaBeouf is the public face, his weapon against Fox. That way the film could still tread on the familiar ground of corruption and the loss of innocence, and LaBeouf's character could actually have a real crisis of conscience in this film, instead of being such a fucking Dudley Do Right.
That's not what we got, however. No, the Oliver Stone of 1987 gave us a "Wall Street" with shades of grey, with characters that felt more like real people dealing with real human problems, and an ambiguous, darker ending where nobody gets away clean. The Oliver Stone of 2010 gave us a "Wall Street" with two dimensional caricatures, one-dimensional villains, and a big, sappy, wet fart of a conclusion.
I hate the Oliver Stone of 2010.
On a positive note, I did love the musical contributions from David Byrne and Brian Eno in the film. But I already owned their fantastic album, "Everything That Happens Will Happen Today", so I guess this movie was completey worthless.
Reviews of "The Social Network" and "My Soul To Take in 3D" are coming soon, for the 12 people who actually read this damned blog. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to drink some whiskey and watch "Sons Of Anarchy" on iTunes because Dish Network hates me.
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