This might as well be a daytime soap opera + cnbc. There is no movie, much less anything about wall street other than the scenery setting. Just a few random talking points plugged into it. From the get-out-of-jail trailer of gekko, i was expecting a movie about his rise to the top again doing the deals he does best with the financial meltdown as the backdrop. Disappointment.
Interesting to read all the disappointment with this film, just brings up the possibility, with all the heightened popular interest in things economic, for some director creating a film that does satisfy a need to treat the subject with the vision these posters have for it. Though, it'd be hard to beat the realities of the day with any fictionalized account of trading/investing. Could it have been done better than in the first version? How?
There is a million ways. How about if SL character was a computer wiz that works for GS (we see cages of very fast machines humming in one scene), and the movie initially is about him against Gekko style trading, where in the end the competition between them becomes more important than the markets and people they represent? SL steals the code from GS (art immitating life) only to join Gekko in bringing down a really evil competitor. Gekko provides inside information to SL such that this input makes the model print money..All filmed in NYC with all its splendor, gorgeous women, very fat cars and yatchs, etc etc etc... If it is going to be a documentary, make it a documentary. If it is going to be good fiction, make it good fiction. If you are going to try to do both, you better have a killer story line that holds it all together....
Thats a good preliminary approach. Take the computer whiz notion to the next level where artificial intelligence alleges that with enough input, that is a comprehensive set of enough technical and fundamental data accounting for the possibility of the unforseen events influence as well, the market suddenly becomes, by the characters estimates, predictable to where trillionaires are now a possibility. That is beyond the current level of computer involvement in markets; say bringing Cray into the screenplay. Sort of like Spacey in 21.
This movie sucked bad. Everything seemed rushed. The Fed meetings were idiotic. I wish Winnie would have went to jail for tax evasion or fraud while Gekko rose from betraying his own blood.
I disagree. Had Winnie's role cease to exist the movie would have been much better. She acts like her shit don't stink.
Every character in the movie represents a symbol in the meltdown winnie: hippy liberal - peace on earth jake: how average joe get to wall street jake's mom: real estate speculators who got killed frank's company: lehman brother + bear stern frank: dick fuld (minus the jumping in front of train part) bretton: one of the many wall street ceo who lost their job and had shady/illegal deals going on. bretton's company: goldman sachs gekko: why wall street will never change as i said, it's more talking points than a movie with a story...