Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

I'm not a big Oliver Stone fan at the best of times, but the original Wall Street is one of the two Stone films (alongside Platoon) that I would recognise as an undisputed classic. Which makes it a hard act for a sequel over 20 years later to follow. Even given that, Money Never Sleeps is a crashing disappointment.

Michael Douglas was going through more than his fair share of problems during filming. Unfortunately, it seems to show with a performance that seems less than fully engaged and offers only a fraction of the drive that made Gordon Gecko such a memorable character.

Instead what you get is excessive focus on the young leads - Shia LaBoeuf (who after early promise in his career seems somewhat stalled and offers another performance almost identical to every other Shia LaBoeuf performance) and An Education's Carey Mulligan who struggles valiantly with an underwritten and underused character. Indeed, of the cast only Frank Langella offers any depth and he departs proceedings early. Added to this is a plot that fails to engage, other than the odd gripping boardroom scene, and an ending that seems badly tacked on and clashing with everything that went before.

But probably the film's worst failing is that the backdrop (the global financial crisis) swamps the story. So we are supposed to be bothered about Josh Brolin as the boo-hiss villain when what he was doing (although illegal) was small potatoes compared to what the whole industry was up to. You end up feeling like the target is write there in front of Stone, but he completely fails to nail it.

Overall - 5.5/10 A big disappointment, lacking any spark from Douglas, its shallow and flat and lacking in tension with an unbelievable ending.