banking industry when he almost seemed to catch himself in his own
wonkishess.
“It’s gigantic subject matter, but it’s documentary subject matter,” Stone said about some of the themes running through “
Money Never Sleeps,” the follow-up to his era-defining hit that uses
the recent financial meltdown as a backdrop for his conflicted
characters. “You have to find that balance between the story of these
people and the economics of the collapse.”
With a screenplay by
to mixed but mostly favorable reviews, is perhaps the most anomalous
star-driven movie to be released in years. On one level, it’s a studio
sequel featuring both built-in brand recognition and actors who can
lure filmgoers 30 and younger.
But the Fox film is also a serious movie about heady
topics — the perils of greed, the intersection of money and family and
even coneheaded subjects such as government bailouts and credit-default
swaps. If a CNBC producer tried to write a Greek tragedy, it would look
something like this film.
“The studios don’t make many movies like this,” says star
But this paradox raises a key question: Can a film at once serve as a policy document and commercial entertainment?
Released in 1987 and set in the era of go-go trading and corporate raiding, the original “
in Cox doing the right thing and Gekko being sent to jail for his sins.
Gekko’s trademark line, “Greed is good,” was intended as a sly comment
on the excesses of the era, although to many, the phrase, as well as
the movie itself, was taken as a glamorization of that world.
The new film starts with Gekko’s 2001 release from
jail, before flashing forward seven years to an elaborate plot
involving a young trader named
The story increasingly weaves in Gekko — who also happens to be the father of Moore’s fiancee (
In being given the chance to make a sequel, Stone
has been granted a kind of filmmaking mulligan — a chance to update a
movie that might otherwise seem dated in today’s ever-more-treacherous
financial world.
As both he and Douglas note, much of the traders’
criminal activity from the first film is now quasi-legal. Stone, who
like the others was speaking from a balcony overlooking the
showed the madness of the free-market experiment in 1987, but I think
now we reached the end of that experiment.”
At the same time, the movie — for what its
principals say are reasons of accuracy as well as audience sympathy —
can’t go too far in turning the
“It’s really easy to just look at the big picture and say, ‘Oh, wow, there are people not eating and
Originally scheduled for an April release — it would
have coincided almost exactly with news of the government’s fraud
lawsuit against Goldman Sachs — “
But Stone and Douglas say they believe there will be plenty in the
upcoming news to fuel interest in the film even in the fall.
The balance between the news and fictional drama can be a delicate one, and few understand that better than Stone.
At 63, newly married and with young children, the
famously hard-nosed director is said by many of his stars to have
mellowed, even as both his interviews and his films (he also is set to
release “South of the Border,” about South American leaders) suggest a
man still tangling with all manner of political and social topics.
During an interview, he moves between disbelieving jibes about the
hypocrisies of the business sector and the intricacies of the U.S.
electoral system.
That may all add up to an eat-your-vegetables
message not consonant with how most A-list studio movies are promoted.
But the film toys with a simple, uplifting idea at the film’s
conclusion: that even snakes can shed their skin.
“There’s no question the system is oppressive. (But)
people need hope,” Stone says. “I don’t like cynical endings. I choose
to believe Little Red Riding Hood doesn’t get eaten by the wolf.”
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