Wall Street (1987)

February 28, 2010

On-Demand, Seattle, WA

*** ½ / ****

By Scott Muoio

Wall Street is a well-deserved cinematic classic. Filled with great speeches, dynamic tension, and terrific performances it is the defining film of American capitalism at it greedy best.

Director Oliver Stone gives us just enough information to make the somewhat confusing world of selling fake ownership and pushing papers easy to understand. He also unleashes a fast paced script that is filled with riveting action and memorable characters.

Martin Sheen is masterful as a blue collar lifer and current labor union leader. Terrance Stamp is awesome as a venture capitalist that prefers winning to making money. John C. McGinley makes a hilarious stockbroker goof ball. And of course, Michael Douglas gives a career defining performance as Gordon Gecko, an arrogant, self-absorbed, shark of a businessman that burns the candle at all ends and knows that rules are for chumps afraid to face the truth. And what is that truth? That greed is good, of course, and self-interest is what makes America the most powerful and important nation in the world.

Only Charlie Sheen and Darryl Hannah don’t particularly work. Sheen plays Douglas’s boyish apprentice and fall guy but never exudes the necessary charisma and sharpness to make us really believe that he is holding millions of dollars by the balls. Hannah is likewise stiff as a love interest that may be loving more than she at first appears.

Overall, though Wall Street is a killer film that will make financial district types salivate with money lust and liberal socialists wag their fingers in disgust. But both will be thoroughly entertained. Now that’s good filmmaking.

Director: Oliver Stone

Producer: Edward Pressman

Writer: Oliver Stone, Stanley Weiser

Starring: Michael Douglas, Charlie Sheen, Daryl Hannah, Martin Sheen, Sean Young, John C. McGinley, Hal Holbrook, Terrance Stamp

Original Music: Stewart Copeland

Cinematographer: Robert Richardson

Editor: Claire Simpson