Review of Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010) by Josh Y — 09 Jul 2012

Its a while since I last watched Wall Street, in fact I have it on video so perhaps I'll fish it out, so in essence I was viewing Money Never Sleeps as a stand alone film and it doesn't really require prior knowledge.

In truth it doesn't require much of anything because following an opening 20 minutes that is basically all numbers it eases into a fairly formulaic drama. The original film saw Stone hot off the heels of his best film, Platoon, and a Best Picture Oscar so it was a more vital film which nabbed a Best Actor award for Douglas.

The sequel is more in the mould of Stone's recent 'political' outings, W. and World Trade Centre in which he purported to deal with the kind of issues that he used to attack with such vigour that it often got him in hot water.

These days Stone's work is much more middle of the road, in the more recent films that I mentioned the real issues that lie at the heart of the matter are merely hinted at, opting for a softer approach, which might make the his work seem more accessible to the mass audience but Stone was always at his best as an incendiary film-maker.

Money Never Sleeps feels like a film that was made by a middle aged man who, in a film-making sense, has lost his vitality. That's not to say that Money Never Sleeps is a poor film, it isn't, it just isn't one that is going to have any kind of significance.