WHEN an accomplished enfant terrible director revisits and butchers one of his own classics, it’s a tale more sordid than the financial misdeeds he’s trying to condemn.
Such is the cautionary tale of the sequel to that ’80s classic, Wall Street.
The crushing events of the Global Financial Crisis certainly primed the usually overactive guns of the irascible Stone, but in this case they have failed to fire.
There is little dramatic tension here, and little at stake. The sickly-sweet saccharine message that our families and our time are our real wealth is lost in a lust for the dollar that confuses Stone’s aims.
For this child of the ’80s, Stone’s original triumph was to make the money markets compelling on the silver screen. It is a celluloid legacy he squanders here.
That old stager Michael Douglas does steal every scene he’s in, but again this only reinforces what a washed-out, pale imitation of its former self this entire production is.
It’s not terrible – it’s just not very good.
Sadly, cameos by an overtanned and wrinkled Charlie Sheen and the even more wrinkled director Stone himself serve only to highlight how far, and how fast, the mighty have fallen.
Our only hope now is that Stone leaves his other classics on the shelf. The concept of “Platoon 2: This Time We Win” is too awful to contemplate.
The smart money says keep your wallet in your pocket for this one.
– Jason Beck
