Like many an aspiring economist (yes, it's true, I aspired to economics once) I used to suffer from a socially unacceptable finance fetish. This story might take a while to tell - I'm not used to speaking about it in public. In terms of bizarre obsessions, currency derivatives may be the final frontier. I spent many days with Investopedia, the Monte Carlo equation, even the Carlyle group website - convinced that I was doomed to die alone, unloved by anyone except for the cadre of wonky Asian dudes who always sat in the front row at lectures, slept through them, and still set the curve. At the American Apparel located helpfully next to my college campus, I once went in and, after waiting until the store was empty, hesitantly asked the salesgirl if they could make me one of those nifty T-shirts that said, "I put out for options." "Um," said the salesgirl uncomfortably, "I think you'd have to check a specialty store." I laughed and pretended that I'd wanted one of the more mainstream "You're Looking at A Sister Wife" outfits instead.
But then the credit crunch happened, and banks went out like Jenga towers with a few too many bricks pulled out of them, and suddenly finance was everywhere. People on SNL were talking about it. People at the water cooler were talking about it. Everywhere I looked, people were reading "When Genius Failed" and talking trash about Alan Greenspan. The NYT dedicated feet of newsprint to credit default swaps, a concept that - let's be brutally frank here - is really not as complicated as those young, gelled-and-suited Harvard grads at cocktail parties want you to think it is.
Tragically, I no longer felt smarter than everyone else. But I started to feel normal (not an acceptable trade-off, actually.)
And that urge, that urge to get down in the dirt and roll in this collective obsession, this once-niche perversion, is what led to "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps."
Let's spare a moment and think of the other things that "Never Sleep." Manhattan. Las Vegas. Your credit rating. The neighbors' newborn baby. Perez Hilton. Cyborgs. Alexander Skarsgard, or at least those parts of him that HBO can show without getting fined by the FCC. Gawker. Google. Bond, James Bond.
Sadly, money doesn't make for nearly as arresting a tagline as any of these other things. Oliver Stone is not known for making great movies, and his understanding of world financial markets seems limited to a steroids-and-dollars joke that is somehow supposed to help the audience - who, theoretically, haven't just finished reading Niall Ferguson's "Ascent of Money" under the covers at night - understand the concept of leverage.
Josh Brolin plays an investment banker, but all we really know about him is that he just received a bonus of $1.46 million, which actually makes him just like those annoying neighbors whom you'd like to feel superior to but can't because they're so suddenly, inexplicably rich while you continue to toil away at a dead-end job that you hope will one day repay you with glory and renown, or at least dental insurance. Brolin's girlfriend, Mulligan, runs a lefty-talk website, but her real purpose is to cart around a massive blood diamond - excuse me, engagement ring - that she says "makes her uncomfortable." Yeah, right. Oh, and we know Brolin isn't an evil corporate hack because he's all about clean energy. To Brolin's shock, his boss (the craggy-jawed Heathcliffe-type in charge of Goldman Sachs) is only interested in clean energy investments that will fail, because Goldman wants to protect their oil investments. (Which is, I think, the plot of a whole different movie that George Clooney made in 2005, but whatever.)
The audience is given to understand that thanks to the meltdown, Brolin's mega paycheck is in fact his last supper. But instead of packing that lucre off to Switzerland and getting the hell out of the country - ie, to an estate in upstate New York - he's running around trying to figure out who killed his boss and convince Carey Mulligan to marry him even though she's totally turned off by his colossal, throbbing, incredibly expanding...wealth. Yeah, right.
There might have been a time when "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" was titillating, but alas, that time is not now, now being a time when even the redneck at the corner grocery can refinance Your Mom's home mortgage with one hand tied behind his revolving stimulus package.
At the end, Carey Mulligan's father tells Brolin, "It's not about the money, it's about the game." Sadly, for Oliver Stone, this film was clearly all about the money. The money, our fascination with the money, and how much money he can make from our fascination with the money. And for once, it's all hanging out where everyone can see it.
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