Review of Wall Street (1987) by Arshi R — 23 May 2010

Grade: B+.

Wall Street is an awesome but extremely flawed film, which makes up its flaws by being great Hollywood entertainment and yet retaining a timely message. To see this film is to see extremely complicated subject matter simplified into something we can all understand, while retaining the truth that makes it powerful in the first place.

This is a great role for Charlie Sheen as Bud Fox, a stock broker who wants to bag one of the biggest sharks in town; that shark is Mega broker and capitalist businessman Gordon Gekko, in a seminal performance by Michael Douglas, arguably his greatest role. In fact, so good is Douglas as the conniving and heartlessly snake-tongued Gekko, that he lifts this film above its merely average drama, with a mediocre love story.

All the stuff going on in Fox's life as he begins to collect insider info for Gekko and make big bucks (while operating out of various offshore accounts to cover his tracks, both his own and his friends and associates), is merely standard procedure, as we see him say things like "Who am I?"; cheesy things like that do pop up, like Stone is telling us that Bud is struggling with the Ethical and Moral dilemmas created by some of his heinous actions. The message is not conveyed in the most subtle of ways at times.

Bud's father (played by Martin Sheen, Charlie's real life father), serves as the true moral compass of the film, and even though he loves his son unconditionally, he realizes that he is a part of something ugly, and knows that it takes a "natural born liar", as he calls his son, to do what he does and still be able to sleep at night. But as long as Bud has his home, his girl (Daryl Hannah as the super-shallow social climber), his super shallow materialism and most importantly, his money, the illusion will persist and his greedy actions continue.

Bud Fox is a persistent guy, a born liar, and doesn't care about people he isn't directly aware of, e.g., anyone outside of his direct contact; and that's all it takes, is the stupidity on his part of putting those in direct contact with him (his family and friends) in danger of losing their livelihood, for him to realize that one's actions do, in reality, have consequences. It's an obvious lesson, yes, but money can make easy questions seem very, very difficult. And money made very fast and very easy can make heroine look like a beginner's drug. Bud Fox learns in a matter of weeks in a two hour film what it took Anakin Skywalker a lifetime through six films to understand; that he was swindled by a wielder of power (Gekko, or in Star Wars, Darth Sidious aka. Palpantine), only to realize too late that he was aiding and abetting evil all along, to the misfortune of all.

The films quick pacing keeps the film engaging, it has that hustle and bustle feel of overcrowded workplaces of 80's business and market exchange. The visuals are fast cutting at times, the tension gets visceral and the soundtrack ramps up at all the right moments. Call me nostalgic, but these crowded Brokerage Offices look a lot better than the rooms of computers making the decisions for us today; most of these kinds of rooms have much less people in them today, and many more computers, making these deals and trades.

Computers can't tell whose lying and whose telling the truth. A computer won't look twice at fishy transactions. Computers don't think; they do. They act, and to react is compulsory. Together, a few men with many machines have the ability to bend the fate of governments, countries and their people, institutions, and even corporations as well. All these people did (relatively recently, I mean, as opposed to decisions long gone) was replace men with machines, and then lobby deregulation; the small group of people left to hire are simply happy enough to have work in the modern world, and don't have time to criticize what they are a part of by default. It's almost like The Terminator, only more indirect and thus far more insidious; oh, and its not fiction, which is just bended truth. Remember that I'm not saying technology is bad, that would be ridiculous; its just man's use of technology that irks me.

The shots of the Twin Towers just make me feel so uncomfortable when I watch this film; I get angry, and then I get sad, and then an million things go through my head at once. There must be at least twenty establishing shots in this film alone of the buildings, and it reminds me of so much that in reality, those buildings were never even attached to, but which we have lost. I still haven't found it in me to watch films like United 93, or World Trade Center. And then I feel disgusted by I when I feel perfectly fine watching something like Z, or even a film like Blood Diamond, or Hotel Rwanda; this mad, mad world.