Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

Theatrical Release Date: 2010 09 24 (USA)

UPC: 024543697992

Studio: 20th Century Fox

MPAA Rating: PG13   Contains:[Adult Situations, Profanity]

Summary: Ambitious young investment banker Jacob Moore (Shia LaBeouf) discovers that greed is still the name of the game when he forges a fragile alliance with onetime Wall Street hotshot Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) shortly after Gekko is released from prison. Having served eight years for securities fraud, money laundering, and racketeering, Gekko emerges from prison to find that his daughter, Winnie (Carey Mulligan), prefers to remain estranged, and that his former Wall Street cohorts are still raking in the cash. Flash-forward to 2008, and Winnie is dating a proprietary trader named Jake Moore (LaBeouf), who expresses a passion for green energy while working for his mentor Louis Zabel (Frank Langella), of Keller Zabel Investments. Despite heading up one of the most prominent investment firms in the country, Louis Zabel is forced to personally fight for the future of Keller Zabel before the Federal Reserve after the company's stock takes a hit due to persistent rumors that it's being dragged down by debt. Denied a bailout from the government, Keller Zabel soon falls victim to a hostile takeover lead by powerful investment bank partner Bretton James (Josh Brolin), of Churchill Schwartz. His job on the line and his mentor out of the picture, Jake discovers that Gordon Gekko is out promoting his new book "Is Greed Good?" and decides to attend a lecture being given by the author at Fordham University. According to Gekko, greed is now sanctioned by the government, and the U.S. economy is on the verge of collapse as a direct result of leveraged debt and wild conjecture. When Jake goes behind Winnie's back to try and repair her relationship with her father, Gekko reveals his compelling theories on the likely reasons for Zabel's downfall. Later, as Jake begins plotting to avenge his mentor, Gekko starts to reveal his true colors. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Category: Drama

Awards: Film Presented – Cannes Film Festival Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion – Hollywood Foreign Press Association

Features: cc

Audio Commentary by Director Oliver Stone
Gordon Gekko Is Back

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

Format: Digital Video Disc (DVD)

Release Date: 12/21/2010

Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 Cinemascope

Audio: DD5.1 Dolby Digital 5.1, DD2 Dolby Digital Stereo

Runtime: 133 Minutes

Sides: 1

Number of Discs: 1

Language(s) English,Spanish,French

Subtitles: English,Spanish

Region: USA & territories, Canada

Chapters: Disc #1 -- Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
1. Scene 1 [:25]
2. Scene 2 [8:01]
3. Scene 3 [1:31]
4. Scene 4 [3:15]
5. Scene 5 [2:49]
6. Scene 6 [3:54]
7. Scene 7 [:39]
8. Scene 8 [5:01]
9. Scene 9 [4:03]
10. Scene 10 [5:17]
11. Scene 11 [4:27]
12. Scene 12 [:53]
13. Scene 13 [4:35]
14. Scene 14 [3:22]
15. Scene 15 [:59]
16. Scene 16 [5:05]
17. Scene 17 [1:36]
18. Scene 18 [4:31]
19. Scene 19 [3:11]
20. Scene 20 [2:10]
21. Scene 21 [2:10]
22. Scene 22 [1:37]
23. Scene 23 [6:12]
24. Scene 24 [:28]
25. Scene 25 [4:39]
26. Scene 26 [4:10]
27. Scene 27 [:38]
28. Scene 28 [1:39]

Perry Seibert

Like the economic bubbles that are discussed throughout it, Oliver Stone's Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps seems like it's going to have a huge payoff, but bursts before that happens. As the film opens, Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) walks out of prison, and finds nobody there to pick him up. We're then introduced to Jake Moore (Shia LaBeouf), a young and hungry financier convinced that green technology is the next big thing. However, after fellow financial whiz Bretton James (Josh Brolin) destroys the firm Jake works for -- and in turn Jake's mentor, Louis Zabel (Frank Langella) -- the now revenge-driven junior executive meets Gordon, who is speaking at a local university about the evils of the current financial climate. Complicating matters is the fact that Gordon's estranged daughter, Winnie (Carey Mulligan), and Jake are engaged. Gordon wants back in her life, and offers to trade Jake tips on how to get back at Bretton in exchange for access to his daughter. While Gordon's dealings with Jake appear to be on the level, Winnie continues to insist she wants nothing to do with her father -- concerns that seem justified as Gordon begins manipulating Jake into getting him access to Winnie's 100-million-dollar trust fund. Say this for the movie, much of it is fun. As a pulpy drama set in the very recent past, Money Never Sleeps feels perfectly timed to capitalize on our current economic troubles for the same reason that Dallas became a smash TV show during a protracted recession in the '70s -- regular people want to live vicariously through rich and powerful people's lives, but still be assured that the movers and shakers are amoral a-holes. And if the screenplay didn't soften that blow in the final act, you get the sense that Stone would have had his first culturally impactful work since JFK. The director is in full command of his material and his skills for the first time in over a decade, effortlessly throwing out stylish -- if not exactly necessary -- split screens and special effects. He seems artistically alive, and an engaged Oliver Stone is a very good thing for movies in general. He gets good work from his actors as well. Once LaBeouf lays off the overly thick New York accent he starts the movie with, you can see why Stone was drawn to cast him as an ambitious but honest hero who slowly gets sucked into a world of corruption. Michael Douglas slips back into Gordon Gekko's skin like it's a favorite power suit, and while he comes awful close to chewing on the scenery, Stone keeps things at such an elevated emotional pitch that Gordon's flowery monologues never feel out of place. And in the scene that requires the most from him as an actor -- Gordon's heart-wrenching attempt to explain himself to his grown daughter -- Douglas is flawless, never letting us know for sure if this antihero's confessions are heartfelt, or just another ploy to get the best deal. It doesn't hurt that he gets to play the scene with Mulligan, an actress talented enough to convince us of both Winnie's emotional vulnerability and the steely resolve she no doubt inherited from her dad. In films like Salvador, Platoon, and Born on the Fourth of July, Stone expertly tapped into righteous anger -- both his own and the public's -- in order to feed his effective, if often overwrought, style and themes. The best aspect of Money Never Sleeps is its lightness; he's still angry, but he's having some fun, much like he did throughout the paranoid fever dream that was JFK. Where it disappoints is the shift in the third act from fun to soft. If he'd dropped the film's closing 20 minutes, he would have improved a great deal on the original Wall Street. As it is, though, this new Wall Street is his best film in over a decade, but it's hard to shake the sneaking suspicion that Stone -- like his most famous character -- is mellowing. If that's true, he's going to have to look to something other than anger for inspiration. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi

Cast and Crew: Edward R. Pressman  Producer 
Oliver Stone  Director 
Craig Armstrong  Composer (Music Score) 
Celia Costas  Executive Producer 
Alessandro Camon  Executive Producer 
Stephen Schiff  Screenwriter 
Eric Kopeloff  Producer 
Allan Loeb  Screenwriter 
Alex Young  Executive Producer 
Michael Douglas  Actor 
Shia LaBeouf  Actor 
Frank Langella  Actor 
Carey Mulligan  Actor 
Josh Brolin  Actor 
Susan Sarandon  Actor 
Eli Wallach  Actor 
Austin Pendleton  Actor 
John Bedford Lloyd  Actor 
Vanessa Ferlito  Actor 
John Buffalo Mailer  Actor 
Jason Clarke  Actor 
Christian Baha  Actor 
Maria Bartiromo  Actor 
Waltrudis Buck  Actor 
Alice Burla  Actor 
Anthony Cochrane  Actor 
Frank Cornei  Actor 
Michael Genet  Actor 
Richard Green  Actor 
Limor Hakim  Actor 
Edward Henzel  Actor 
Sondra James  Actor 
Harry Kerrigan  Actor 
Nan Lu  Actor 
Edmund Lyndeck  Actor 
Tom Mardirosian  Actor 
Sylvia Miles  Actor 
Manu Narayan  Actor 
Annika Pergament  Actor 
Annie McEnroe Pressman  Actor 
Eric Purcell  Actor 
Eliyas Qureshi  Actor 
Dieter Riesle  Actor 
Nouriel Roubini  Actor 
Oliver Stone  Actor 
Richard Stratton  Actor 
Faye Wattleton  Actor 
Catherine Wolf  Actor 
Thomas Belesis  Actor 
Darin Guerrasio  Actor 
Greg Hildreth  Actor 
George Steven Blumenthal  Actor 
Emmett Fitzsimmons  Actor 
Madison Mason  Actor 
Michael Cumpsty  Actor 
Jean Pigozzi  Actor 
Natalie Morales  Actor 
Olaf Rogge  Actor 
Carrie Lee  Actor 
Rhonda Schaffler  Actor 
Eloise DeJoria  Actor 
Coralie C. Paul  Actor 
Sean Stone  Actor 
Peter Antico  Actor 
Mark Gray  Actor 
Richard Crawford  Actor 
Paul Grunert  Actor 
Roy Insana  Actor 
Andrew Serwer  Actor 
Vincent Farrell Jr.  Actor 
Anthony Scaramucci  Actor 
Ali Velshi  Actor 
Jim Cramer  Actor 
Becky Quick  Actor 
David Faber  Actor 
Melissa Lee  Actor 
Larry Kudlow  Actor 
Carl Quintanilla  Actor 
Sue Herera  Actor 
Ed Bergtold  Actor 
Tim Wilson  Actor 
Mike DiGiacinto  Actor 
Kevin Keels  Actor 
Ben Nisman  Actor 
Laura Dawn  Actor 
Amber Dixon Brenner  Actor 
Curzon Dobell  Actor 
Leonard Logsdail  Actor 
Warren Buffett  Actor 
Melissa Francis  Actor 
Sunil Hirani  Actor 
Joe Kernan  Actor 
Thomas M. Joyce  Actor 
Graydon Carter  Actor 
James Chanos  Actor 
Steve Liesman  Actor 

Country: USA