Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

PLOT: A young Wall Street trader (Shia LaBeouf) looking to avenge his mentor’s (Frank Langella) ruin by a corporate raider (Josh Brolin) teams up with the newly-reformed Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas), who also happens to be his girlfriend’s (Carey Mulligan) estranged father.

As the global economy teeters on the brink of disaster, a young Wall Street trader partners with disgraced former Wall Street corporate raider Gordon Gekko on a two-tiered mission: To alert the financial community to the coming doom, and to find out who was responsible for the death of the young trader's mentor.

The makers of Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps have done their homework—the writers interviewed dozens of bankers, Stone’s father worked on Wall Street, Brolin was once a day trader, and LaBeouf passed his Series 7—and that shows. The alphabet soup of C.D.O’s, C.D.S’s, M.B.S.’s, etc., is appropriately dizzying, reflecting the complexity of the instruments that led to disaster.

A must watch film for everyone. An important thing to note is that despite being a sequel ( of WALL STREET) , MONEY NEVER SLEEPS is a much different film than its predecessor. Here, Gekko’s somewhat reformed, and no longer (entirely) the snake he was in the original film. That said, Douglas still gets to be his oily best here, particularly in the third act, where we get more of the old Gekko magic (including the slicked-back hair).

Our only issues with WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS was that in an attempt to ape the split-screen style of the original film, Stone goes a bit overboard with some of the cheesier effects like super-impositions, fade-outs, and an iris-in at one point. That all worked in 1988, but in 2010 it’s a little much to swallow. We also thought the ending lacked the bite the original film’s conclusion had, but then again- this is a different kind of film. Overall, it’s a worthy follow-up to the classic original.