Friday, January 28, 2011

"Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" Movie Review

"Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" is the sequel to "Wall Street."  This movie was directed by Oliver Stone who also produced the 1991 hit "JFK" starring Kevin Costner.  What attracted me to this movie, since I have not seen the first movie, was the cast.  Mainly Michael Douglas and Shia LaBeouf.  Michael Douglas' character Gordon Gekko was thrown in jail for 8 years in the previous movie for money laundering.  This movie begins with Gordon Gekko getting out of jail and sadly nobody comes to meet him on that day.  The movie then jumps forward 7 years to Jake More, Shia LaBeouf's character, at his home with Winnie, played by Carrie Mulligan.  Jake is watching the news where he see's Gordon Gekko on T.V. promoting his book that he wrote in prison about greed.  Winnie immediately asks him to turn it off and he doesn't so she grabs the remote from him turns the T.V. off and begins crying.  This is were the audience picks up on the fact that Winnie has a emotional relationship with Gordon Gekko.  We later find out that Gordon is her father.  Jake works for a big business on Wall Street with his mentor and business owner Louis Zabel.  After Jake arrives at work Zabel asks him to come to his office.  Zabel presents Jake with a bonus check of $1,450,000.00.  Jake thanks him and Zabel asks him to leave.  Jake immediately goes and buys Winnie a wedding ring.  Jake is discussing the business with a friend of his and his friend tells him that he thinks Zabel's business is going to fail and Jake tells him that he is so confident in the business that he will put up the rest of his bonus check, which is $1,000,000, to buy stock in that company.  Jake does so and the following morning the stocks for Zabel's business plummet and Jake loses all his money.  The reason that the stocks plummeted is because of rumors going around about Zabel's business.  After this Jake attends a speaking engagement were Gordon Gekko is the speaker.  After the event Jake speaks with Gekko and Gekko reveals to Jake that the rumors were started by Bretton James, another Wall Street big shot, and that Bretton made millions betting against the stock in Zabel's business the day it crashed.  This is when Jake realized that this was all a set up so Bretton could acquire Zabel's business in a buy out and also this unfortunate event led Zabel to commit suicide.  Jake teams up with Gekko on a two-teird plan: To get revenge on the man that caused the death of his mentor, Zabel and to bring a huge scandal to Wall Street that opens Bretton as the ring leader.  Little did Jake know that Gekko is after revenge of his own and also for what got him in jail in the first place.  Money.

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