Movie Review - Wall Street

Wall Street (1987)

Starring Charlie Sheen, Michael Douglas, Daryl Hannah, and Martin Sheen

Directed by Oliver Stone
***Currently streaming on Netflix***

If I'm being completely honest, the only reason I watched Wall Street is because the trailer for its sequel looks moderately interesting.  I've never seen another Oliver Stone movie other than World Trade Center.  I know next to nothing about stocks (beyond what I'm told to invest in by my father).  There's no reason this movie should appeal to me.

Big surprise...I was bored out of my mind watching this.  I didn't give a damn about anything going on.  Talking about losses and dividends and insider trading and a bull and bear market...Why don't you throw something at me that I'd care about?

Throwing aside the yawn-inducing plot (which focuses on a young up-and-coming stock broker [Charlie Sheen] helping out multi-millionaire investor Gordon Gecko [Michael Douglas]), the film is simply poorly directed and structured.  Co-writer and director Oliver Stone crafts a shockingly bland-looking film.  There's not a shot here that looks rich or pretty...everything looks "film school"...not the work of an Academy Award-winning director.

Add to that one of the worst performances I've seen on film from Charlie Sheen as the young and impressionable Bud Fox, the young broker who gets played and screwed over by the sleazy Gordon Gecko.  We're talking soap opera level acting here.  That kind where there's a raised or furrowed eyebrow followed by some insipid music cue.  Any moment where Sheen is required to raise his voice in anger, it comes across as laughably bad.  Standing next to Michael Douglas and his own father, Martin Sheen (who plays his father here), one has to wonder if there really wasn't a better actor around in 1987 to take on this role.

Unfortunately, Michael Douglas's performance -- playing a character who is so well known for his quote "Greed is good" -- isn't nearly spectacular enough to raise the level of this film beyond awful.  

So now the question is will I have any desire to see the upcoming sequel to a film I've considered one of the worst I've seen this year?  The appeal of Carey Mulligan may be enough, but I'm not looking forward to it in the slightest anymore.

The RyMickey Rating:  D