Wall Street - Money Never Sleeps - Blu-Ray

Film: Oliver Stone took 23 years to revive his stock market thriller "Wall Street" and its iconic character Gordon Gekko, played Oscar-winningly by Michael Douglas, in the cinema. It was worth the wait, as the financial crisis provides the perfect reason to send Gordon Gekko back out onto the financial trading floor.

After spending several years in prison, former financial genius Gekko (Michael Douglas) is trying to regain his footing in the world of fast money. But the big deals are now being made by others. One of the up-and-coming talents on Wall Street is young Jake Moore (Shia LaBeouf), the partner of Gekko's daughter Winnie (Carey Mulligan), who wants nothing to do with her legendary father since his arrest. When the financial markets threaten to collapse and Jake's mentor Louis Zabel (Frank Langella) takes his own life, the young stockbroker secretly seeks advice from Gekko. For Jake suspects that powerful investment banker Bretton James (Josh Brolin) has driven Zabel to suicide. And Jake knows only one goal: to bring James to his knees. But in doing so, he runs the risk of losing something much more valuable than money...

"Wall Street - Money Never Sleeps" (which, by the way, has already been the title for the good making-of documentary for the first part) has many positive sides, but also some clear weak points. First the successful aspects: there is Michael Douglas, who even after two decades knows how to play the dodgy Gordon Gekko as a strong mixture of cunning businessman and slick, greasy stock market shark, who goes over dead bodies for success. But even though it's Douglas who leaves the strongest impression, the film really belongs to Shia LaBeouf. He sort of plays a modern version of the character Charlie Sheen played in Part 1 and does a really good job of it. Jake's ambition is literally written all over LaBeaouf's face, which makes his performance extremely convincing.

But the rest of the supporting cast, from Josh Brolin to Frank Langella to Carey Mulligan ("An Education") all deliver strong performances in a sequel that, in its best moments, has become an extremely intelligent, highly topical and thus very explosive financial thriller that manages to achieve a very high level of suspense entirely without frantic car chases and shootouts. It is these moments that show that Oliver Stone still knows his craft extremely well.

The numerous references to the 1987 original are also very nice. Here, as there, Stone has cut himself into the picture in a few split-screen sequences, and an important character from the first film also makes a very brief, but also very amusing, guest appearance. So Stone manages, despite the long break between the two films, to establish a direct reference again and again, which should be positively noticeable especially to those viewers who appreciate the original.

Where Stone fails to convince at all, however, is in the way he stages the emotional parts of his story. Whether it's the character of Jake's mother, who is very well cast with Susan Sarandon but completely unnecessary in terms of content, or the director's not exactly discreet reminder to the audience why Jake wants to put a stop to James Bretton by having Louis Zabel flit briefly through the picture as a ghostly apparition, so to speak, after an important confrontation between Jake and Bretton - Stone hasn't really done himself any favors with such content-related and stylistic ideas. That the film then also increasingly degenerates into a love and family drama and loses any previously established bite at the end, clouds the otherwise very positive impression that leaves this sequel.

If Stone had focused more on the part of the story that the film's title also stands for, and if he had dared to end the whole thing about ten minutes before the present finale, "Wall Street - Money Doesn't Sleep" might well have had what it takes to re-enter the race as a hot contender at the next Academy Awards. But as it is, the film is just a good to very good piece of intelligent cinema, which can inspire with some moments of technical perfection and acting finesse, but in other moments rather leaves a slack aftertaste. Despite all the weaknesses, however, it is well worth seeing!

At this point, all that remains is to hope that Michael Douglas wins the battle against cancer (fortunately, it looks like he will) and will be able to give us many more strong roles like that of Gordon Gekko.

Image + Sound: On the Blu-ray, "Wall Street - Money Never Sleeps" has lost little of its engaging film look. The image is very high-contrast and clean, and scores high marks for overall sharpness. The color palette varies from very bold, to reduced to rather drab grays, each matched to the action in the film. The audio is dominated by the dialogue, but the sound mix can also boast some good surround effects that make for an engaging overall tonal picture. Very good!

Extras: In addition to a very informative, albeit somewhat chatty, commentary by Oliver Stone, the Blu-ray offers a few other featurettes worth watching. A conversation between Stone and his leads is among them, as are interviews with the cast and a multi-part making of. This, however, goes less into the filming than into the connection between the original and the real background. For example, there is an interesting tour of Wall Street, which provides many historical facts about the famous financial mile. Furthermore, 15 deleted and extended scenes offer a look at side characters cut from the film and also offer a guest appearance by multi-millionaire Donald Trump. This is amusing in a way, but would have been a bit disturbing in the overall context. The trailer for the film and BD live features round out the bonus package.

Conclusion: "Wall Street - Money Doesn't Sleep" is a good white-collar thriller that, as a sequel to the award-winning 1987 original, can't quite convince, but still offers solid entertainment on a high level. The Blu-Ray can convince technically, the extras offer an informative insight especially on the real background. Not without weaknesses, but overall: recommendable!

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp