Review: Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010)

Director: Oliver Stone
Cast: Michael Douglas, Shia LaBeouf, Cary Mulligan and Josh Brolin
Rating: ***

Just how much is too much? On Wall Street, it’s not the question you ask. Money is earned for money’s sake. Everything else is just by the way.

Oliver Stone’s two-decades late sequel to the original Wall Street begins where he left off in 1987. Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) is out of jail and has written a book predicting the latest financial crisis. But he’s really looking for a way to return to the top of the game, and he’ll manipulate anyone, including his daughter (Carey Mulligan), to get there.

Jacob Moore (Shia LaBeouf) is the new kid on the block – a sharp talent with the drive to get himself to the top too. Bretton James (Josh Brolin) is the proclaimed villain who plays dirty and eventually pays the price.

Since it is an Oliver Stone film, Wall Street brokers dress a lot cooler, speak in high rhetoric and ride fast bikes on weekends. And don't forget to throw in swanky mansions, swish parties and Goya paintings for good measure. There’s even a back story of drug addiction.

Nothing too new there, you might argue, especially since the basic characteristics of the game are the same as they were in the Eighties – it’s a dog eat dog world out there and money rules. Relationships, ethics and morals are for the faint-hearted, and success is judged only in terms of loss or gain.

But Money Never Sleeps does of course have some contemporary relevance, taking as its loose inspiration the demise of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, and the ensuing financial crisis. In a bid to bring the story up to date, even the quest for alternative energy and the power of the blog have been thrown in. Things also get technical at times, with a bewildering four screens flickering with numbers and graphs.

What makes the film work is a stellar performance by Michael Douglas who slips right into Gekko’s Berluti shoes as if he’d never taken them off. Shia puts in a sincere performance and you’re almost ready to forgive him for his earlier offerings.

Think of the new Wall Street as one of those gambling movies where your final hand can make or break you. Wall Street is where the big boys gamble. And greed, after all, is primal.

- Sarit Ray

This review was originally written for gqindia.com (Click here to see...)

Review: Despicable Me (2010)

Director: Pierre Coffin, Chris Renaud
Cast: Steve Carell, Jason Segel, Russell Brand, Julie Andrews, Will Arnett, Miranda Cosgrove, Dana Gaier, Elsie Fisher, Kristen Wiig
Rating: ***

He looks like Uncle Fester with a beak nose, and speaks with a Russian villain accent. He bursts a kid’s balloon, and pretends to be a recorded voice when girls from an orphanage ring the bell to sell cookies. That apart, bad guy Gru isn’t all that bad. Plus, he’s got one hell of a flame-exhausting ride (take that, Batman) and totes a freeze gun.

And if Batman were indeed the epitome of cool, this guy’s got a cool(er) underground lair where Pacman-like, gibberish-talking minions do his bidding. Movies with Steve Carell (or even just his voice) seem to be incomplete without a spy or a 007 angle. So there’s a balding, hard-of-hearing version of the scientist who invents cookie robots and fart guns (when asked for a dart gun, that is).

But there are no out and out bad people in a kids’ movie, so Gru must be transformed. By the same three orphans who came to sell him cookies. He adopts them so he can sneak in his cookie robots to steal a shrink ray from his rival, Vector, the gennext nerd-turned challenger to the throne of the top villain in the world.

Gru’s ultimate plan for the greatest crime ever: steal the moon. So he builds a rocket in his basement (one up on Tony Stark this time), flies to space, shrinks the moon and brings it back. Easy as you like it.

Along the way, the girls work their magic on him, he grudgingly plays parent to them, and discovers he’s pretty good at it. There are enough good laughs to make the film work for you as well as the kids – while a visit to the amusement park gives the CGI team the perfect opportunity to show off their 3D skills (remember, this is neither Pixar nor Disney).

I must say though, I would rather have paid to see the movie in 2D than watch a dimmer screen while wearing silly 25-rupee paper glasses.

-Sarit Ray

This review was originally written for gqindia.com (Click here to see...)