The Wall Street hustle

It was only a matter of time before Oliver Stone — purveyor of American conspiracy theories, digger-upper of buried bodies, outer of skeletons in closets, plus the creator of iconic ‘80s figure Gordon Gekko — returned to his twin passions and decided to throw them both in one movie.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is a sequel to his ‘80s hit about greed in the moneyed halls of Manhattan, but it’s got that curious subtitle — “Money Never Sleeps.” Usually, a sequel of quality comes right out and brands a “2” after the title. Subtitles are a little wussy: they usually mean the filmmaker is trying to sneak something sleazy in through the back door, à la Leprechaun: Back To Tha Hood.

Fortunately, Wall Street 2 (let’s just call it that, for the sake of elegance) has got more going on for it than green little men murderously hunting down pots of gold. It’s got little old men (such as Eli Wallach) hunting down the green. And it’s got Michael Douglas, longer in the tooth after eight years in the can for insider trading, slipping into character as easily as he does his designer suits. Not surprisingly, it’s the seasoned actors who come off better in this sequel — Frank Langella, sleazy Josh Brolin, even the fossilized Wallach (remember him in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly? Stone does: he tosses that movie’s iconic theme in as a ringtone in-joke). Even Charlie Sheen — who played the ambitious young Bud Fox in the original, seduced by the lizard allure of Gekko — turns up, fat-faced and smug, to rub Gekko’s nose in all his misfortunes.

Contrast these veterans with new whiz kid Shia LaBeouf (Jacob, an idealistic Wall Street trader), who wants to marry Carey Mulligan (Gekko’s estranged daughter Winnie), and it’s like watching kindergartners playing with Play-Doh money. They just do not seem credible in an adult world populated by adult actors who radiate their own brand of true-life sleaze.

Ay, but if it’s corporate sleaze you’re after, lad, then Wall Street 2 is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Jacob’s mentor, Lew (Langella), watches as his company melts down, driven out of existence by nasty rumors spread by Bretton James (Brolin), head of an oil conglomerate. Jacob vows revenge against Bretton and, after bumping into Gekko and spilling the beans about his intentions toward Winnie, the older trader starts supplying “insider” information to help with the younger trader’s plans. Meanwhile Jacob impresses Bretton enough to land a job in his energy division.

I settled myself in for what I hoped would be a modern version of The Sting, with elaborate setups, double crosses, triple crosses, all elegantly laid out and cleanly executed. Instead, Wall Street 2 is as confusing as the actual Wall Street meltdown of 2008, with terms like “credit default swap” and “over-the-counter derivatives” being tossed around so much you need a WSJ just to keep up.

Not only that, Stone (who himself turns up in a cameo) employs a directing style that is way too busy, almost like CNN — onscreen graphics, charts and figures, whiz-bang wipes, multiple screens. Stone used to have a knack for crackerjack editing. This just seems like he’s trying hard to keep up with the media and the times.

It’s disappointing that Stone wasn’t willing to go “full Stone” on this project: do a real anti-corporate America hatchet job on the Powers That Be as he did with JFK, Nixon, Born on the Fourth of July. As everyone knows, the crazier Oliver Stone is, the better he is. Maybe it’s because he is now one of those Powers That Be, and so can’t really afford to toss around the nitroglycerine like he used to.

It’s a shame, because the Wall Street bailout, and what led to it, and how fear was used to “leverage” the expensive idea to Americans and the government, would make a great movie. (It did, in fact, make a great Rolling Stone article, called “Wall Street’s Bail Out Hustle” by Paul Kanjorsk. That’s what they should have used as the script.)

Instead, Stone couldn’t resist resurrecting the character who has been so good to him. The “reformed” Gordon Gekko now espouses his new philosophy in a book (Is Greed Good?) and on the lecture circuit. He still has that lizard-like charm, the gravelly voice, the patina of sleaze that makes you believe he knows all about The Evil That Men Do.

Stone has fun dusting off Gekko from a decade that, arguably, was their heyday. The ‘80s suspenders don’t make a comeback, but the huge-ass cellular phone does during an opening scene in-joke. Stone is aware that his ‘80s original has become an iconic, and ironic, cultural reference point.

It sounds good on paper, having Gekko come out of the cooler and school another ambitious young pup in the ways of the world — so why isn’t it very much fun? And why does LaBeouf (who looks like a shrimpier David Schwimmer and has about the same level of acting fireworks) trust the master manipulator of Wall Street with, not only his job, but his fiancée’s future for even a second? I suppose like attracts like — or sleaze attracts sleaze. In any case, it doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to realize that Michael Douglas cannot be taken at face value. This leads to the movie’s dramatic turning point, such as it is.

Another thing that’s back from the ‘80s is a near absence of any women on the scene. The original 1987 Wall Street had Daryl Hannah pretty much operating as décor while Men Got Things Done. In the sequel, sure, there are a couple women sitting behind computer monitors, and Carey Mulligan cries and throws a fit now and again, but no credible women characters exist in Oliver Stone’s mindscape. Just like in the ‘80s.

One interesting piece of trivia is that actor LaBeouf didn’t know squat about trading before taking the role. So Stone told him he’d better start learning. LaBeouf reportedly took $20,000 of his own money and invested it through Schwab; he’s now earned $650,000 from it. Maybe this little nest egg will be useful if the acting thing doesn’t work out.

There is a nice scene in a Federal Reserve Board Room where Bretton makes the case that his corporation — and all the major bankers who have hitched their financial wagons to it — is “too big to fail.” It may not be terribly dramatic, but this scene has the ring of truth. Stone himself says, in promoting the movie, that “banks have become what Gekko was in the ‘80s.” They’re bigger, scarier, meaner and greedier than one cultural icon could ever be. But it’s hard to dramatize the evils of banking.

It’s up to Douglas, then, to carry a lot of Wall Street 2’s weight on his shoulders. He’s tough, wizened (if not wiser) and looks like he’s been through eight years of prison. In one scene, he chokes up, talking about losing a son to a drug overdose, and one can’t help thinking of his real life problems with his own son’s drug conviction. Just as in Wall Street, he’s the Triple-A stock to watch in this often-tepid sequel.

We can look back now at the original Wall Street as a simpler time in America, when insider trading was the worst possible economic scenario; when Charlie Sheen was young, promising, and didn’t envision a future playing a version of his tabloid self on Two and a Half Men; when greed wasn’t necessarily good, but was good box office, and the accoutrements of the ‘80s — the big hair, the oversized suits, the cars and tables piled with coke — seemed like the makings of a fitting morality tale.

Nowadays, it’s way more complicated. The American public — addicted to spending and piling on debt — was also complicit in bringing on the financial collapse of 2008. Director Stone knows this, and he has Gekko pretty much make the same case to a lecture audience while plugging his book in the movie. But in movies, it’s always better to show, not tell. Maybe it would have been better as a book. Or a Rolling Stone article. Or in 3D.