WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS: Decent, but Not Good Enough

This is not the great Oliver Stone that we remember from the days of Platoon, JFK, or the original Wall Street, but it is the best Stone in years. The left-wing radicalization that progressively shaped his films, distorting their reception, has here given way, though not completely, to a certain reflection on the state of affairs in the world, not without political undertones, but still relatively universal in its message. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.

As expected, the film’s plot is set in the somewhat stylized reality of the early stages of the 2008 financial crash. The company where the main character, Jake Moore, played by Shia LaBeouf, works, bears clear resemblance to Lehman Brothers, the financial behemoth that was the first victim of the crisis, and Bretton James’s organization (Josh Brolin) is, in my opinion, a federally funded version of Goldman Sachs—an incubator for staff for the American central bank (the Federal Reserve) and future Washington administrations. Both, as massive investment banks, were pillars of the American financial system. For someone who is not familiar with the specifics of investment banking, it’s hard to even imagine what such giants do, because the word “bank” here is more misleading than explanatory.

These institutions do not collect deposits to provide loans, which is known from traditional commercial banking—they trade securities and currencies on a global, almost unimaginable scale, provide advice, conduct mergers and acquisitions worth tens and hundreds of billions of dollars, guarantee and place (find buyers for) stock issues, and invest their own and others’ money—mainly the latter. They use financial instruments created by brilliant mathematicians and economists, often with a Nobel Prize under their belt. And only they can fully understand how these instruments work, though even they cannot predict the potential global consequences of using such tools.

It’s enough to say that in many instruments, the so-called financial leverage can reach amounts many times greater than the value of the investment (for example, in a model with a leverage of 1:50, a 2% change in the price of the financial instrument upwards multiplies the invested capital by 100%, and a 2% decrease brings it to zero). Lehman Brothers collapsed with nearly 700 billion dollars in assets, with equity of around 22 billion, which means that it was leveraged more than thirty times on average. For comparison, the GDP of Poland for example in 2010 was about 440 billion dollars—Lehman, at the time of its collapse, could have bought the total sum of all goods and services produced in Poland in about a year and a half.

Of course, Stone does not focus on the nuances of the economic collapse, nor does he delve into its economic causes. If he attempts to offer a diagnosis, it is rather from an ideological perspective. What is interesting about his approach is that the failing bank (yes, that’s Lehman) becomes a kind of moral compass, a symbol of the weakness of decaying capitalism, but at the same time, a relic of better, older times when the economy was simple, and every dollar had gold backing (Bretton James! Bretton Woods!—is it a coincidence that one of the characters bears a name that evokes the most famous financial pact in post-war history?). Such a relic had to be absorbed by those who survived—becoming scavengers feeding on the carcass. Stone uses a Moore-esque device that turns the bloodsucker into something almost saintly, a tired man who no longer understands the way modern markets work. Of course, all of this is done to paint the scavenger in darker hues.

A certain reversal by the director is also putting the criticism of the market into the mouth of the uber-cynic and super-speculator, Gordon Gekko (once again, Michael Douglas). And this device is quite refreshing because, in fact, Stone does not betray this character; he allows him, to some extent, to remain who he always was, adding to him, though it would seem impossible, even more ruthlessness. His subversiveness is doubly so, given the circumstances in which Gekko delivers his tirade and for what purpose. There are also largely successful attempts to curb his didactic impulses, and although a bit of (perhaps a bit more) cheap, simplistic journalism sneaks into the film (the falling dominoes, the symbols of wealth highlighted at the charity ball), it does not exceed the familiar but bearable framework of a contemporary moral tale.

There are moments when the “old” Stone, the universalist Stone, shines through; not the left-wing radical adorned with war colors, but the person who cares about the fate of another human being, as in Platoon or the first Wall Street. The original became a critique of the greedy, ruthless capitalism, accounting for the yuppie era. By having Gordon Gekko mouth the provocative greed is good, on the one hand, he achieved the opposite effect from what was intended, making him a god for the young wolves of Wall Street, but on the other hand, he also forced the audience to think. He gave a glimmer of hope for a better tomorrow, putting the tempted Bud Fox (played then by Charlie Sheen) to the test.

In Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, that hope no longer exists. A very telling scene is the brief appearance of Bud Fox—he is not a converted sinner, enlightened in his mistake; he is just another heavyweight who has forgotten the ideals of his youth. Bud has learned his lesson—Gordon Gekko can be proud of him. Stone flips the poles. Back then, by sending the “bad” capitalist to prison, he was saying that the mistakes of youth can be corrected; today, whether because the film is much weaker and its power diminishes as it nears the end (especially the final is very disappointing), or because Stone himself no longer has hope, he shows that the world has not changed, and if it has, it’s for the worse. Greed is no longer just good; it is also legal; we cannot change a system that corrupts everyone who approaches it, because who would do it? What remains is the belief that true strength lies in the idealism of individuals.

Someone might ask if the director is making a diagnosis of the collapse? Ideologically, yes, on the grounds of purely human imperfections. But does he bring us any closer to understanding it? Not even a step. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is a decent film, but it lacks both the strength and the unmasking drive of the original.