REVIEW: Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps



Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps opens with a voice-over explaining the Cambrian explosion; a period of rapid evolution that occurred around 530 million years ago. This, we’re led to believe, was the “mother of all bubbles”. There’s little doubt that for director Oliver Stone, the preface is intended as a parallel to a more recent burst bubble: the global financial crisis.

Such comparisons between paleontological activity spanning multiple millennia and the recent meltdown of money markets may seem a tad overstated, yet it’s worth noting that for all his skill as a filmmaker, subtlety has never been Stone’s strong suit. If nothing else, both the original Wall Street (1987) and its sequel do share one evolutionary similarity. With its Darwinian depiction of dog-eat-dog corporate takeovers and excessive wealth, Stone defines the world of stockbroking according to the creed of ‘survival of the fittest’.

For Gordon (“Greed…is good”) Gekko (Michael Douglas), a character who once embodied the spirit of ‘Reaganomics’, times have changed. Since the events of the first film, Gekko has served an eight-year jail term for fraud and insider trading and is now slowly climbing the corporate ladder back to notoriety. However, in the age of an advancing global economy, the greed that was once merely good has now become “legal”.

As with its predecessor, Gekko remains at the periphery of the film’s plot; he’s a catalyst for the various financial and familial dramas that Money Never Sleeps engages rather than its central focus. Instead, the film revolves around ambitious stockbroker, Jake Moore (Shia LeBeouf), and his fiancée Winnie (Carey Mulligan), Gekko’s estranged daughter.

When the GFC hits and Moore’s business dealings begin to go under, he seeks out Gekko, trading promises of a father-daughter reunion in return for mentorship and corporate information. But gradually, his secretive attachment to the elder Gekko threatens to jeopardise both his future career success and his relationship with Winnie.

Beneath the veil of grandeur, mergers, and financial jargon, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is, at its core, obsessively concerned with the relationship between fathers and sons. This in itself is hardly a new preoccupation for Stone. Both Wall Street and Platoon (1986) were structured via triangular conflicts between a young man and two competing paternal figures.

On this occasion however, the anxieties over severed or corrupted patriarchal lineage are far more widespread. From the act of financial patricide that sets the events of the film in motion, Money Never Sleeps recasts the commercial world in distinctly Freudian terms. Collapsing distinctions between the biological and business family, Stone’s film displays a primal fascination with powerful parents and usurping offspring.

One of the most revealing aspects of Money Never Sleeps is the association the film makes between corporate consumption and cannibalism. With more than a hint of paranoia, Gekko remarks at one point that, “parents are the bones on which children sharpen their teeth”. Elsewhere, Goya’s famous painting, ‘Saturn Devouring his Son’ hangs prominently in an office belonging to a rival business executive.

The use of such symbolism is perhaps overdone but it does provide a mythical template through which to view each character’s misfortune. In the case of Gekko though, these references occasionally seem at cross-purposes. If the statue of wings displayed in his apartment posits Gekko as a modern-day Icarus (who flew too close to the sun and fell back to earth) then the scene in which he preaches his state of the nation address to an adoring audience makes him a Christ-figure reborn.

For the most part, Stone maintains this ambivalence toward Gekko’s character. Are we meant to view him as a tragic antihero or a resurrected prophet? Had this question remained open at the end, Money Never Sleeps might have retained the scepticism towards corporate America that gave the original film so much critical punch. In what amounts to the film’s singular disappointing flaw, Stone instead imposes a redemptive close on proceedings.

Given the lengths that Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps goes to in order to represent the ‘insanity’ of this business world, the climactic triumph of fantasy over reality may indeed stand as the film’s ultimate (and yet unintentional) ironic gesture.

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6 Responses to “REVIEW: Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps”

  1. Tany Bayo says:

    I couldn’t wait to see Shia LaBeouf in this movie. I’ve seen the first part of Wall Street and I was really inspired by Gordon Gekko. Greed is good!

  2. Proteus Marx says:

    You’re on the money with, “In what amounts to the film’s singular disappointing flaw, Stone instead imposes a redemptive close on proceedings.”

    Why did Stone do that?! I found it very frustrating.

    • Josh Nelson says:

      Proteus, I’ve been pondering that same question. I’d like to think that Stone was attempting an ironic gesture and failed but that might give him too much credit.

      It is an indictment of the film if Stone truly believes in the redemption of his characters and/or the institutional scene.

  3. Proteus Marx says:

    You’re absolutely right. It was disappointing to say the least, especially given that the sickly sweet ending was applied in such a slap-dash manner.

    To be completely honest, it is my opinion that the film was mediocre, filled with empty complications, all of it licensing popularity from the ‘Gordon Gekko’ brand.

    I saw it as a ‘Gordon Gekko’ lunchbox, containing a bland cheese sandwich.

  4. Josh Nelson says:

    “I saw it as a ‘Gordon Gekko’ lunchbox, containing a bland cheese sandwich” – That’s a great line.

    That ‘Money Never Sleeps’ resurrected an anti-hero of the 1980s only to canonise him also reflects a recurrent trend in American cinema/culture; resuscitating an unpleasant past to impose a redemptive spin on future proceedings. And that’s more the shame, since the Gordon Gekkos of the world (and their aspiring proteges) aren’t exactly the kind of figures that probably deserve such nostalgic re-appraisal.

  5. Proteus Marx says:

    I couldn’t agree with you more. It’s quite ironic that the ultimate finance-themed film, ultimately, panders (via audience tastes) to film financiers.

    It seems that the branded lunchbox is doing fairly well, according to Box Office Mojo (http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=wallstreet2.htm), though apparently short of studio expectations.

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