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Fans of Oliver
Stone will be forgiven for wondering if the director has gone a little
soft in his old age. The belligerent maverick that spawned ‘Platoon,’
‘Born on the Fourth of July,’ and ‘JFK’ has been replaced by the more
pragmatic imposter responsible for ‘World Trade Centre’ and the hollow
‘W’. The latter in particular was grossly inadequate.

Audiences sat up
when they heard that one of America’s most inept leaders, George W.
Bush, was going to get the Oliver Stone treatment. They were instead
served up a tepid, directionless biopic that confounded more than it
exposed. However, even George Bush had his ardent followers and
perhaps, they enjoyed that movie.

No such luck for
the lecherous investment bankers and big corporations who brought the
world to its knees in the financial crisis. Surely, everyone hates
them. And once again, what better director than Stone to take his
rapier to the greedy bankers? The result is ‘Wall Street: Money Never
Sleeps’, a sequel to his 1987 classic.

The movie opens
with Gordon Gekko (welcomingly reprised by Michael Douglas) emerging
from prison where he has just done an eight-year stint for insider
dealing. In a great use of in-jokery, one of the items he collects is a
mobile phone the size of a dumbbell. The joke being that the world has
moved on, but Gekko has not.

The action lurches
forward with Frank Langella’s investment company, Keller Zabel, under
threat from a larger concern, Churchill Schwartz (a blatant reference
to Goldman Sachs) headed by Josh Brolin. As Langella faces up to a
world of increasingly predatory colleagues, he does the honourable
thing and kills himself. Shia LaBeouf, in an effort to avenge his
mentor’s death, tries to sabotage Churchill Schwartz and is bizarrely
rewarded with a job offer.

In a rather
convenient twist, LaBeouf is engaged to Gekko’s estranged daughter.
When he tries to reconnect mother and father, he ends up striking up a
relationship with the old man. As they get closer, LaBeouf’s character
is forced to re-examine all his relationships.

The photography in
the movie is fantastic. Overhead vista shots of the New York skyline
can never tire, nor can the lush red foliage of New England. However,
like much of Stone’s recent offerings, you are left wondering what is
the direction in all of this? What is the official stance? Is this an
attack on capitalist greed? Been there, done that. Is it an insider
account of how those banker fat cats played hokey with the world’s
finances? It barely even scratches the surface. Or is it just a plain
old love story in which all this banking stuff takes on secondary
importance? Bingo.

Wall Street 2 fails
to tell us anything that we didn’t already know about the global
financial crisis. Michael Douglas acts as a sort of on-screen narrator,
explaining to LeBouef how the banks got everyone in the mess they are
in. Douglas is a far more contrite character than his 1987 counterpart,
but the now cancer-stricken actor has lost none of his charisma. The
movie is only really alive whenever he is on the screen.

Shia LaBeouf gets
more screen time, but fails to convince as the nimble sidekick. He is
an engaging enough actor but lacks the gravitas to go toe-to-toe with
Douglas. His emotional scenes in particular lack the requisite depth of
feeling. It is often left to the masterful Carey Mulligan to bail him
out, a task she executes with some aplomb.

Hers is really a
career to watch. Anyone who saw Mulligan in ‘An Education’ had the
singular privilege of seeing a new doyenne announce herself on the
world stage. It was like watching Judi Dench in her prime – only
Mulligan is some 50 years younger than the great dame. She has far less
to do in Wall Street 2, but still manages to emerge with some credit.

The rest of the
cast does a pretty solid job. Brolin is, as ever, a reliable hand in
the bad guy stakes. Eli Wallach, the 95-year-old veteran method actor,
with nearly a hundred films to his credit, almost steals the show with
his irreverent one-liners. Susan Sarandon has limited screen time as
‘the mother’. Even Charlie Sheen, the young turk of the original, turns
up in a self-deprecating cameo.

As soon as one gets
over the fact that this is not a classic Oliver Stone polemic, it is
actually a half decent movie. The boardroom scenes are filled with
foreboding and one remains galled at the levels of government
intervention the bankers needed just to stay alive. Some of the scenes
are eerily close to the meetings held by mafia bosses in ‘The Godfather
II.’ There are, perhaps, even more parallels than that.

Stone remains a master of fixating on a core message, but somehow it
all sounds a bit too preachy. If only there was some greater thrust to
the spine of the movie, it would have been so much more memorable. As
it is, ‘Wall Street 2’ is the movie equivalent of a slightly underdone
hamburger: thoroughly engrossing when your teeth have sunk in, but
instantly forgettable the minute it is over.