Full disclosure, I consult for hedge funds and investment banks, so if you’re looking for another article vilifying greed on Wall Street, you’re out of luck. The original ‘Wall Street’ is as inspiring to me as ‘Catcher in the Rye’ is to assassins. And I am not alone. Despite writer/director Oliver Stone’s intention to make a cautionary tale about greed and excess, he quite unintentionally inspired a generation to seek their fortune on Wall Street, spurred by the rapacious character Gordon Gekko, a role that earned Michael Douglas an Oscar.
Douglas reprises the role of Gekko in ‘Money Never Sleeps’, a sequel that begins after Gekko’s prison term for insider trading. Before discussing the film, it is important to contrast the historical circumstances of the release of each film. The original was released in 1987. Reagan was president, the stock market was the place to get rich, being rich was cool, everyone was on coke, and if you wanted to score with the ladies, you had slicked-back hair.
The sequel comes at a much different time. The market crashed less than two years ago after bets on the housing market blew up, our current President bragged during his campaign about how he decided to shun Wall Street in favor of becoming a community organizer, rich people are told to ‘spread the wealth’, and there is a general sense of ‘I told you so’ from people who have never liked the Wall Street crowd. To those people, I would simply offer the following: if you predicted in 1988 that the stock market would crash and you took all your money out, it means you lost money for 19 straight years. Congratulations, genius.
While Stone is a millionaire and his father was a veteran of Wall Street, it seems he is not a huge fan of the Street or capitalism. ‘Money Never Sleeps’ is in many ways a second bite at the apple for Stone, another chance to take a shot at Wall Street, but this time with a much more sympathetic audience. But a funny thing happens in this film. Stone resists that urge and instead makes a movie about the complexity of human nature. The way he corrects the results of the first movie is not by trashing everyone who sells stocks, but rather by layering the characters, specifically Gekko.
The film certainly contains plenty of Wall Street stereotypes (it is rife with greed and betrayal) and at times feels like a soap opera bordering on a chick flick. But pay attention to the opening narrative, it is where you’ll find the meaning. What Gekko seems to have learned is that there is no more precious commodity than time, and in that realization we see a development in his character. This film depicts the men and women of Wall Street not just on the trading floor, but with families and as people who endured the worst tragedy in our nation’s history.
Will ‘Money Never Sleeps’ inspire another generation to go to Wall Street in the same way as the original? Probably not. But it does paint a human and complex face on the people who work there, and may deflect some of the reflexive hatred of Wall Street currently pervasive in our culture. After all, hatred and stereotyping of any class of people is still wrong, isn’t it? ‘Money Never Sleeps’ is now playing at Regal Gallery Place.
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