Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

Sequels are made for two reasons- to take the story (in most cases franchise) forward or curiosity to find out whatever really happened once the dust settled. Oliver Stone wanted to see how Gordon Gekko, “a quintessentially American story, manages to survive in a new shark tank 22 years later”. Stone also believes that the world and Gekko have changed but this belief is only limited to the fringes for Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is almost like a shamelessly rehash of its predecessor.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps would have worked better has this been a straight tale of how Gekko got back at the world. After all if you thaw someone as iconic as Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) shouldn’t he be given more to do than sign books and give the looks? Gekko’s daughter, Winnie (Carey Mulligan) blames him for everything wrong in the world and loathes his mere presence but even then it’s just one teary scene with loads of reference laden dialogue that sets the record straight between the two. Once Gekko is forgiven and enters Winnie’s world we really don’t see them make up for lost time; instead Gekko’s only interested in getting her signature on a piece of paper that will give him access to 100 million dollars he put aside before going to jail. Jacob (Shia LaBeouf), part Gekko-part Bud Fox up and coming investment banker and Winnie’s lover, on the other is one naïve fool who simply refuses to learn the ways of the world. He’s always lending money to his real estate agent mom (Susan Sarandon), speaking on the phone to Dr. Masters (Austin Pendleton), a scientist in sunny California, who keeps asking for money for his sustained efforts to create clean energy, buying rings for Winnie even though she keeps asking him to return the rocks every time the stock market acts up, working for Bretton James (Josh Brolin), the devil incarnate or Gekko reprised depending on the way you look, fully aware that James is a spineless broker and yet acting surprised whenever he does something nasty- ever after all this Jacob has the same sullen expression on his face no matter what how different the emotion might be!

Stone made a career of making films on subjects where popular opinion was as varied as chalk and cheese. He had a knack for picking up subjects that allowed him to spin his web in such a manner that our version of truth was challenged and often defeated by his version but those days are long gone. Stone refuses to get a simple point that in this day and age when nothing can be hidden from the masses giving his version of a current event can be a difficult task. Like World Trade Center where he couldn’t really ‘tinker’ around with the facts of what transpired, showing the so called ‘insider’ look at the recent stock market crash isn’t as exciting as it might have sounded on paper. Rather it comes across as several slackly tied scenes where bankers sitting around a large table and ask for bailouts. Stone tries hard as he talks the talk and walks the walks. He even resorts to complete PowerPoint presentations and animation videos to show what the characters are doing. Stupidly enough his camera ravenously looms over jewelry in a scene where he shows the New York glitterati. The hopeless ploy to string the return of Gordon Gekko and the world’s latest economic crisis with the same string makes Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps a highly uninteresting film.

The biggest problem with the film is that it seems to take the adage of the more things change the more they remain the same a tad too seriously. As a result the little ambiguity that defined Gordon Gekko and Bud Fox in Wall Street is traded for rather simplistic shades of gray that often end up categorizing everyone as good or bad. Stone pitches Gekko as a wounded anti-hero as opposed to the villain that the first part made him to be. But the truth be told Gordon ‘Greed is Good’ Gekko wasn’t really the villain; he took some liberties that weren’t illegal and just made money. In the sequel all the bad guys are Gordon Gekko wannabes and all the good guys are Bud Fox look-alikes. Worse still all good guys are rehashed Gekkos without committing the crime or serving time!

Barring Michael Douglas, who looks devilishly devious as Gekko two decades on, there is nothing to write home about Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. To comprehend how limited an actor Shia LaBeouf really is one just needs to see the scene where he mouths his signature ‘this is the end of the world’ Transformers kind of line as the stock market plummets. Josh Brolin as the new and improved Gordon Gekko is made to look very villain like kind courtesy Rodrigo Prieto’s Godfather like lighting but that is the extent of his scariness. Susan Sarandon gets a handful of scenes where she gets to exercise her southern accent and Carey Mulligan’s wounded butterfly like Winner Gekko is tedious.

This is a film where everything happens almost the way you expect and some times it takes too long to happen. The set up isn’t as exciting as the manner in which Stone revealed this world twenty years ago. No longer are we interested in his conspiracy theories and we really don’t care about the fact that once upon a time he saw things that we really bother noticing. We know how this ugly world works and Oliver Stone needs to know that as well!

Rating: 2/5

This review first appeared in Buzz in Town

Image: IMPA Awards

Read More

We Are Family

*This review might contain spoilers.

A fashion photographer, Aman’s (Arjun Rampal) been divorced for three years now and decides it’s time for him to introduce his girlfriend Shreya (Kareena Kapoor) to his kids and divorced wife Maya (Kajol). Nothing goes as planned and the kids- Aleya, Ankush and Anjali- hate Shreya right from the word go. She calls them monsters and they think of her as a wicked witch. A few weeks later Aman gets caught up because of work and when Maya isn’t reachable on the phone Shreya is forced to spend some time with the kids. As expected they start fighting but a few syrupy moments later Anjali warms up to Shreya and Ankush follows suit. Anajli even helps Shreya at her fashion show but Aleya accuses her of replacing Maya with Shreya. Anjali takes off and finally when Maya finds the little one she and Aman forbid Shreya from even coming close to the kids. Things take a turn when Aman returns to Maya when he gets to know she is terminally ill. Shreya comes to meet the kids and Maya realizes that perhaps she was wrong in judging Shreya. She decides to welcome her into the family.

We Are Family should make it amply clear that buying the rights, saying please and thank you to remake isn’t going to make things any better! There are seven writers who have been credited with the screenplay of the film and even if each had one decent half-baked scene to off, this would have been a passable flick instead of the most boring two hours ever spent on a film!

The producers of the film went to town saying that they have Indianized the tale to suit our cultural palette but the only thing Indian about the whole film is that both the mothers are dying to tell the daughter on her wedding day that she’s the world’s most beautiful bride! The other Indian agenda of the film is to convince unmarried career driven woman that there’s a mother lurking inside her and given, rather thrust upon, an opportunity she’d do a fantastic job of rearing kids.

To Indianize also means base the tale in a foreign country for how else would we ‘justify’ the first wife initiating the second one into familial duties? Had this been in India the loving and more importantly spinster mausi (think Karan Johar regulars like Kirron Kher or Farida Jalal) would have taken over! Based in Australia the six main characters don’t have any friends and their entire existence is based around each other. They go about their lives with such amazing regularity- Aman keeps saying things like ‘I’m sorry’, ‘I didn’t mean to’, ‘I’ll make it up’; Shreya makes boring sandwiches at the drop of the hat, Maya is only concerned about getting her children ready for school- that the thought of even an earth shattering event like cancer breaking the pattern seems sacrilegious.

We Are Family’s writing is insipid and perfunctory to the extent of boredom. Why are we even worried about western world influencing and corrupting our culture when people living in Australia speak better Hindi than south Mumbai crowd! For a character who is four years old and born in Australia Anjali speaks fluent and cinematic Hindi! Even Iravati Harshe, the Indian origin doctor (why can’t, for the sake of cinematic resonance, a Hindi film protagonist find be entertained by a Firang doctor?) comes in every now and then and mouths stupid English to Hindi translated lines like ‘Tumhe apne pati ko bata dena chahiye’ and a few minutes later ‘Maya, ab bacho ko bata do!’

Once we get to know that Maya has only a few days more to live the film more episodic than any soap on Colors. The ‘transfer of power’ scene in the hospital where Maya bestows upon Shreya the responsibility of her three children is so forced that the only thing that outdoes it is Maya’s thrice over talk with her kids where she gives them instructions for living it up.

How does one live an entire life in a matter of days is a theme that has plagued Hindi films for a long time. In the recent past Nagesh Kukunoor’s Aashayein tried dealing with the same thought and the only thing it showed in the name of living it up was a lung cancer patient running everyday! Hrishkesh Mukherjee’s Anand too showed a slice of life but his Anand just went about everyday as if nothing sinister awaits him in the darkness around the corner.

We Are Family is highly insensitive when it comes to dealing with terminally ill patients and the doctor’s insensitivity is almost appalling. When Maya asks how to carry on, the oncologist simply suggests get used to living years in days and almost looks around for the bell to ring in the next patient waiting outside. The lack of sensitivity in dealing with a mother’s heart wrenching last moments are then further trivialized by having huge photos of Maya’s short lived life is slide-shown with everyone dressing up to confer some thing like a lifetime achievement award on Maya for living it up. Raju Singh’s harrowing background score, that makes Maya look like a covert commando for most of the film, also adds to the misery.

The three kids are cute bordering annoying and Arjun Rampal is bored to the extent of functioning in slow motion while the leading ladies are passable. Kareena Kapoor never bothers to put in any effort lest people think she tried too hard to match up to Kajol, who it seems just showed up and doesn’t exert herself at all. There is shot just before the interval where Kajol displays why she is leagues ahead of her co-stars. As opposed to her break-down scene in the kitchen here in the blink of an eye she changes the entire mood when it dawn upon her that she’s dying.

Stepmom fans don’t be fooled by the ‘official’ remake of the films for We Are Family is as regular as Bollywood can ever get. Think Kal Ho Na Ho on a worse day replete with the obligatory jeeven darshan se barpoor standing and looking lost kind of desolate song, Rehmo Karam, that is repeated twice to ensure you heard it and to round-off there is a flash forward to Aleya’s marriage with a grizzly bear bearded Aman, who alarmingly still fits into his decade old trousers and hardly surprising haven’t-aged-a-single-day Shreya at Aleya’s wedding like the gray haired Preity and Saif Ali Khan! Thankfully this film wasn’t based in Rajasthan or else Maya would have married her teen-aged Aleya before popping it just to see her daughter in her world’s most beautiful bride avatar!

Rating: 1 ½ out of 5

Cast: Kajol, Kareena Kapoor, Arjun Rampal, Iravati Harshe, Aachal Munjal, Nominath Ginsberg and Diya Sonecha

Written By: Gigi Levangie Grazer and Venita Coelho

Directed by: Sidharth P. Malhotra

Image: www.wearefamilythefilm.com

Read More