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Wall Street review

Posted : 2 years, 1 month ago on 12 February 2022 02:47

One of Oliver Stone's best films that offers legitimate critiques of the American capitalist system increasingly becoming a corporate oligarchy.


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A classic

Posted : 9 years, 6 months ago on 24 September 2014 08:55

Basically, it is another major classic directed by Oliver Stone but, to be honest, the first time I watched it, I thought it was actually slightly disappointing. I mean, it remains a very good movie, no doubt about it, but I thought that Charlie Sheenโ€™s character was terribly bland and not very well developed. Furthermore, the whole thing about the young stockbroker being attracted by greed but who ultimately rejects it was rather boring and pedestrian. Still, there was some great stuff here, absolutely. First of all, Michael Douglas was just terrific as Gordon Gekko and only to see him makes it worth watching the whole damned thing and, in my opinion, he should have been the main character. Basically, that was the main problem with this movie. Indeed, even though the movie was against Gekko, yelling that he is the bad guy and that you should despise him, deep down, everyone thought he was awesome and this character became an icon, a role model for many guys who wanted to succeed in the stock-exchange world. To conclude, in spite of its flaws, this movie is still an invaluable time-capsule showing Wall Street back in the 80โ€™s and it is definitely worth a look.


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One of Stone's finest films.

Posted : 13 years, 1 month ago on 24 February 2011 02:24

This was randomly on television one night a few months back and seeing as I hadn't watched it yet and was meaning to watch it anyway, I decided to give it a go and I am certainly glad I did decide that. I wasn't expecting loads from Wall Street like I have done for other films in the past but, quite frankly, I pretty much got everything that I wanted. I think a lot of people who are about to watch this would say that it just looks like another mafia gangster film and yes, it is but it goes deeper than that. It isn't just a film about people getting shot all the time but it is a rather personal film about greed, bravery and commitment.


Bud Fox is a Wall Street stockbroker in early 1980's New York with a strong desire to get to the top. Working for his firm during the day, he spends his spare time working an on angle with the high-powered, extremely successful (but ruthless and greedy) broker Gordon Gekko. Fox finally meets with Gekko, who takes the youth under his wing and explains his philosophy that "Greed is Good". Taking the advice and working closely with Gekko, Fox soon finds himself swept into a world of "yuppies", shady business deals, the "good life", fast money, and fast women; something which is at odds with his family including his estranged father and the blue-collared way Fox was brought up.


Michael Douglas is one fantastic actor and certainly does take after his Dad, Kirk Douglas. His performance as Gordon Gekko is perhaps the best performance he has delivered in his career and probably always will deliver! He certainly proved that by gaining the Best Leading Actor Academy Award in 1988 (as well as earning a shared one in 1975 for being a producer of Milos Forman's One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest). Anyway, what I really liked about Gekko was that he was a despicable schemer who is a deep-down psychopath. He rightfully deserved that Academy Award and has shown us one of the most powerful cinema villains of all time. That is normally why I prefer villains over heroes because they are more powerful and have a deeper personality and take things a bit further which makes them more interesting. Charlie Sheen already rose to shine in Oliver Stone's Vietnam war film Platoon and starred alongside a group of fantastic actors but this time, he works alongside another fantastic actor: Michael Douglas who is also the son of a very famous actor (Kirk Douglas) just like Sheen is a son of a famous actor. Anyway, Sheen didn't deliver as spectacular as Douglas did but he certainly wasn't far off from that level of quality acting. It is sometimes hard to fit in two leading characters without making it too much but it worked very well with Douglas and Sheen in their roles. Daryl Hannah was very good as Darien Taylor and Martin Sheen portrays Carl Fox who is Bud's father so it is father and son in both the film and in real life.


Wall Street was one of Oliver Stone's early films but despite that, he still has already earned top Oscar glory not once but twice (Platoon and Born On The Fourth Of July) and it is an extremely underrated work of Stone's that I think deserved more recognition and credit for than some other directors did that year for the films they did. Stone is a director like the late Stanley Kubrick and the great Steven Spielberg in terms of making films that are part of pretty much every single genre there is but Stone is slightly weaker especially from the films that we see of it nowadays in comparison to the films he did earlier in his career. Wall Street was a tribute by Oliver Stone towards his late father Lou Stone who was a stockbroker during the Great Depression in World War II and that made the film rather special but at the same time, quite extraordinary. The script was fantastically written! I have always admired at how people write scripts about this sort of thing about crime, money and gangsters and this is one of the finest screenplays of that genre I have listened to.


Overall, Wall Street is an absolutely brilliant film that should be up there with some of the very best crime and gangster films that have ever been made. It is perhaps a film that I think Martin Scorsese would be proud of and would enjoy watching. I think that they should have left this film alone and not made the sequel even though that was still enjoyable. It's a great film for those who at least like crime films but those who don't, they won't be so lucky with liking this one. Basically, it is a hard film to not like but it is also one of those films that you can't rave about.


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Another terrific feather in Oliver Stone's hat

Posted : 13 years, 5 months ago on 18 October 2010 09:09

"The main thing about money, Bud, is that it makes you do things you don't want to do."


Filmmaker Oliver Stone's name has become synonymous with the word "controversial". Love or hate his movies, though, there is no denying the allure to his projects, not to mention the superior craftsmanship and the keen sense of storytelling that ensures each film he creates is worth seeing. 1987's Wall Street is among Stone's most famous works of the '80s, and it endures so strongly in the minds of movie-goers primarily due to the legendary "Greed is good" speech that's delivered by Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko in the film. It's easy to understand why people have held onto this specific sound-bite for so long, as it symbolised the American financial community during the '80s and remains relevant more than 20 years later. In addition to this speech, Wall Street benefits from razor-sharp dialogue, top-notch performances, and an interesting story.



The protagonist here is young, low-level stockbroker Bud Fox (Sheen) who works at a trading firm but aspires to make it to the big time and be more than an invisible office drone. When Bud happens upon some insider information gleaned through a conversation with his father, he passes it onto his powerful idol Gordon Gekko (Douglas) during a once-in-a-lifetime meeting. Impressed, Gekko accepts Bud into his private circle, and Bud finds himself in the fast lane with the possibility of real wealth and power dangling in front of him. He begins to see Gekko's world from the inside, and decides to plunge ahead despite knowing that Gekko has built his empire on illegal insider trading and scare tactics. Interestingly, Bud Fox is not unlike the role Charlie Sheen played in Oliver Stone's Platoon; a determined, fresh-faced, inexperienced, unsure individual who's sucked into a devastating world that wrestles his soul and torments his spirit.


Wall Street is a classic tale of evil manipulating good. In a nutshell, it's a dramatised fictional tale of an era where money was king and everyone was scrambling to get to the top; a time where morals, hard work, integrity, honesty and any semblance of right and wrong was often surrendered to the power of wealth and the appeal of stature. It's not that Wall Street scolds the system - it functions as more of a criticism of the people who would manipulate the system and cheat their way to the top. Oliver Stone's script revels in the unforgiving examination of the high life and the look at the countless hours of work and manipulation behind it. This is balanced, however, by the picture's final act in which the choice between right and wrong is shown to have severe and lasting consequences on both sides of the ledger.



In preparation for Wall Street, Oliver Stone did everything he could to ensure he got all of the details right. Due to growing up around his father's Wall Street office, he was already knowledgeable about the world of buying and selling stock. He additionally conducted lots of research through spending time with brokers from all areas of the business. During shooting, Stone elected to film in real office buildings rather than sets, and he hired former Salomon Brothers partner Kenneth Lipper as technical advisor. The final product is an accurate, penetrating portrayal of Wall Street. Unfortunately, this also means that it's easy to feel lost if you are unfamiliar with the language and rules of the business. Wall Street is a thoroughly verbose picture, and the pacing is consequently uneven, leading to dead spots. Nevertheless, Stone's handling of the material is fairly top-notch, resulting in a technically sound and thematically engaging picture aimed at audiences who have the patience to appreciate fine craftsmanship such as this.


Additionally, what Wall Street lacks in flow (it is somewhat stiff at times) it makes up for in the performances courtesy of the exemplary ensemble cast. Gekko, as portrayed by Michael Douglas in the defining role of his acting career, is a brilliant antagonist. He is the very embodiment of amorality; a man who acquires wealth because it's how he keeps score, not because he needs it. He is driven to win at all costs, and his charisma shields his unethical disposition. Gekko even quotes Sun Tzu, and has made The Art of War his mantra by which he navigates life and the financial markets. Douglas is expectedly brilliant in the part; his performance is a powerhouse of controlled aggression and vindictive cunning, and Douglas executed the role with absolute conviction. As a result of his performance, Douglas earned the Best Actor Oscar. However, despite Douglas walking away with all the accolades, Gekko is more of a supporting character - Wall Street is the story of Bud Fox. Fortunately, Charlie Sheen performed admirably here.



The supporting cast, meanwhile, is comprised of a cornucopia of top-notch actors. There's Martin Sheen who's brilliant in the role of Bud's father (thus, Martin Sheen was playing opposite his real son), John C. McGinley who's equally impressive as Bud's co-worker, and an excellent Terence Stamp as Gekko's rival. Darryl Hannah is the only weak spot - she suffocates the film with an uninspired, dreary performance. Ironically, everyone told Stone to fire Hannah from the movie, but he didn't listen and subsequently regretted his decision.


The most remarkable accomplishment of Wall Street was that it achieved theatrical distribution at an ideal time. Stone wrote the screenplay in 1986, and filming occurred from late '86 to early '87. Meanwhile, there was a massive run-up of the stock market. By the time the stock market crashed and Black Monday arrived, the film was in the can and awaiting its December delivery. While the mechanics of stock trading depicted in Wall Street are outdated, the essence of what goes on is the same, and the frantic nature of trading is no less fascinating. Although best known for the "Greed is good" speech or as another feather in Olive Stone's cap, Wall Street is an absorbing movie about the plight of the soul in the unforgiving atmosphere of big business and bigger money. Eventually Oliver Stone produced a sequel in the form of 2010's Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.

8.2/10



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Wallstreet

Posted : 17 years, 3 months ago on 20 December 2006 11:48

Wallstreet is an intense look into the real world of corrupt corporate companies controlled by the stock market. Charlie Sheen plays the perfect patsy to Michael Douglas's slick, corrupt character. Sheen's rise to the top of the corporate traders gambling ring is as good as it could have ever been protrayed. I highly recommend this one.


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