Wall Street - Money Never Sleeps

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

After spending several years in prison, the former financial genius Gekko (Michael Douglas) tries 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 couple of split-screen sequences, and an important character from the first film also makes a very brief, but also very amusing, guest appearance. Thus Stone manages, despite the long break between the two films, to establish a direct reference again and again, which should positively strike especially 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 the with Susan Sarandon very well cast, but in terms of content completely unnecessary character of Jake's mother or the not exactly discreet reminder of the director to the audience, why Jake Bretton wants to put a stop to James by letting Louis Zabel flit after an important confrontation between Jake and Bretton quasi as a ghostly apparition briefly through the picture - with such content and stlistic ideas Stone has not really done himself a favor. 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: well worth seeing!

At this point, it really only remains to hope that Michael Douglas beats the fight against cancer and will be able to give us many more strong roles like that of Gordon Gekko.

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp