Review of Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010) by Robert H — 13 Oct 2013

In this follow-up to his outstanding WALL STREET, Oliver Stone does a serviceable job but ultimately, the film buckles underneath the weight of its unfocused narrative. The performances are generally good, with stellar showings all around.

Shia LaBeouf shows that he has the chops to potentially carry his own movie, although most of the heavy lifting is done by Michael Douglas and Josh Brolin (the dual antagonists). Quality-wise, nothing is particularly egregious (although the flashy editing was a little distracting).

It's that the film tries to do too much. There's enough material here for at least a couple films, and the romantic subplot could have been eliminated with little cost to the overall story arc.

On one hand, you have the background in the 2008 financial crisis, and on the other you have Gordon Gekko's path back to the top (which would have been the most appropriate story-line to focus on).

There's a lot to say, and despite all of the financial jargon which can be hard to understand, it does have good points when looking back at the 2008 financial crisis in retrospect. Too bad that all of this isn't particularly germane to the story Oliver Stone seemed to be going for, and maybe this movie wasn't the best avenue for all of that material.

To its detriment, this doesn't really start to feel like a "Wall Street" sequel until about three quarters of the way through. It's a good movie, but had some more restraint been shown in editing, it could have been much better than it was.