1987’s Wall Street is one of director Oliver Stone’s finest films. Coming off early masterpieces like Platoon and Talk Radio but yet to go off the stylistic deep end after the triumph of JFK, Stone was at the absolute peak of his power as a filmmaker. The resulting movie — largely driven by a terrific performance by Michael Douglas — stands as one of the defining flicks of the 1980s.
Stone’s follow-up, titled Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, aims to do to the last 10 years what the first film did to the “Me” decade — namely, blow its bedrock pretensions right out of the water. While it doesn't have quite the kinetic rush of the original, Money Never Sleeps still manages to spin an absorbing and infuriating yarn against the backdrop of the current crisis in American capitalism.
This article appears in Sep 16-22, 2010.