Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

Among an excellent cast, Douglas truly is the nexus; he and Stone make this sequel pay off big-time.

LaBeouf plays Jacob as no naif – he can be as slippery and savage as the next suit – but there's also real tenderness in his scenes with Mulligan and Langella (in a small but significant role as Jacob's mentor).

There are times when iconic characters should be left alone to bask in the glory of a single appearance and, unfortunately, that's the case with Gordon Gekko.

It's almost kitschy - the way Stone injects himself into a couple of scenes, an eccentric Eli Wallach cameo, the inclusion of a Charlie Sheen moment that flat out winks at the audience.

Maybe money never sleeps, but this missed opportunity of a movie will have audiences dozing.

The first time around, Wall Street felt like a warning about the perils of excess just as excess started to exact its toll. This one's little more than a reminder that we all got, and remain, screwed. Noted.

The pretentious title might be trying to make a statement about the new, fast-moving economy. It's also a weak reference to the first Wall Street. But mainly, no, it's just pretentious.

Wall Street Money Never Sleeps was a very surprising film. I liked it very much. It is a must for everybody connected in any way to the financial world. 10

A rather unnecessary sequel than comes across as an excuse to give Gordon Gecko another airing.

It was okay, entertaining, nothing more, nothing less. It's probably a bit too economics-obsessed-oriented. This is the kind of movie you watch without really thinking.

Honestly, I still don't understand why this movie exists. This movie is the sequel to the movie "Wall Street" which Oliver Stone directed in the late eighties. It's strange for a sequel to be nearly twenty years away from the original, and if we look closely at the original movie, I honestly think it was not worth investing in this movie. In fact, comparing them is fatal for this movie, which is not even half the quality of the 1987 movie. The film shows the return of Gordon Gekko, just out of prison where he paid for the stock fraud he committed, and the attempts of a young stockbroker to approach him, taking advantage of the fact that he is engaged to the daughter of the former financial shark. What we see next is highly predictable, and the slowness with which it happens does not help. It feels like the movie has been purposely stretched to last longer without the script having material to justify it. Michael Douglas returns to his old character, Gekko, for more of the same. Okay, the character has evolved and looks softer, no longer the rude amoral bastard we saw in 1987. I think the prison stay and aging softened him, and Douglas tried to reflect that in the way he interpreted it. But whoever saw the original saw everything and will miss old Gekko. I also enjoyed the performance of Frank Langella, who gave birth to a responsible and sensible businessman who, trapped by finance sharks, chooses the one that seemed the only honorable way out. On the other hand, Shia LaBeouf and Carey Mulligan are obnoxious. LaBeouf spent the entire movie copying Charlie Sheen in the 1987 movie, which brings nothing new or original to this movie when compared to the previous one, and Mulligan had a cliché and depressing interpretation of a character she couldn't understand. The film also no longer has the moralizing background that the previous one had. The previous movie, in fact, was able to show the darkest, most selfish side of the financial market, with speculation, greed, how a group of profiteers can break up whole firms and send hundreds of people out of unemployment just to make money. This movie forgets all this, puts it all behind the scenes, to accompany a bland family drama between Gekko, his daughter and the man who wants to marry her. Personally, it was a disappointment. It was impossible for me not to compare the two films and this one inevitably lost out. Not even Douglas's performance totally saves this movie.

Wall Street Money never Sleeps is a manifest to the embourgeoisement of Oliver Stone. Between the original film and this one, the approach of this movie went from a social critic to a collaborator of the system. A shameful admittance of one's personnel philosophical failure and losing its soul because of 30 years of embourgeoisement. Shame on you Mr Stone.