Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

The first thing to say is that the original Wall Street is a 9/10. I knock a mark off only because Daryl Hannah was so poor in it. It's funny that Michael Douglas won an Academy Award for Wall Street and Daryl Hannah won a Razzie.

This sequel gets 7/10: it's good but not as good as the original. There is a decent plotline with a lot going on. You see a human side of Gordon Gecko at times, but he's still a manipulative man. There are references to the economic crisis and the bailing-out of the banks. The film begins in a similar way to the origin - by demonstrating how brutal and bitchy the world of stockbroking can be. I was amused by the brief appearances by Bud Fox and the estate agent from the original, and the use of the original theme at the end. However, it's a very different film overall and I'm glad of that. Jake Moore is more established in his career than Bud Fox was, and there's no "good guy" equivalent of the trade-unionist father. It's clever how the informal conversatons between Jake and Gordon are actually trades - favours for favours - as made explicit by Gordon about half-way through.

I say that it's not as good as the original because it doesn't have the catchy one-liners and does not have the same satisfying climax. Oddly enough, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps has a happy ending in which everyone gets what they want. I've read on Metacritic that several critics consider the plot too complicated. I thought it was less complicated than the original. When I saw Wall Street first, I didn't understand how Bud Fox had managed to pull one over on Gordon Gecko. I didn't even know what "insider trading" meant before I'd seen it, although it's easy enough to work out. There are one or two threads in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps that might be cut to save time: the thread with Jake's reckless mother was probably put in so that we understand Jake's background, but I think there could've been better and briefer ways of doing this.

I'm glad they made it as I always wanted to know what happened to Bud Fox and Gordon Gecko at their trials. Now I know!