Up against The Wall.

Veteran stockbroker Gordon Gekko wakes upstart stockbroker Bud Fox in the middle of the night with a phone call, to remind him the Hong Kong markets are open: “Money never sleeps, pal!”

WALL STREET is a powerful albeit slightly cheesy look at the inside of insider trading. Co-writer/ director Oliver Stone, with his characteristic insider knowledge on his filmic subject, conveys another wider world out there that we are not always privy to; amongst the cloying office environments, frenetic relationships and insecure personalities, the people of Wall Street do that mysterious thing they do with imaginary money that isn’t theirs – illegally, unethically and with a plastic 80’s soundtrack.

Bud (Charlie Sheen) is a hungry young stockbroker in a bull pen who dreams of breaking out into something more substantial. Like TWO AND A HALF MEN. Rampant charging corporate bull Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) is on the pedestal Bud would like to inhabit. Through persistence, Bud gets a five-minute meeting with Gekko, to try and land a position as broker for him. Gekko is unimpressed – until Bud lets slip some “insider information” about an airline company that piques Gekko’s buy-and-chop-up instincts.

Bud’s dad, Carl (coincidentally, Martin Sheen) is a union boss at that airline, which is how Bud “just knew” it was ripe for the picking. The elder Sheen brings a stately ease to his role, paternally looking down his nose at Sheen The Younger, both in real life and in character, calling him a “salesman” when Bud insists he is an “account executive, soon to move onto investment banking.” When young Bud asks Carl for a loan, Carl inquires of Bud’s $50K Manhattan job, “Where does it all go?” Bud breaks down his payments on car, apartment, suits, etc. to make him look like the richie he aspires to be, ironically adding, “There is no nobility in poverty any more, dad.”

WALL STREET truly is a snapshot of WASP life in the 80s; young fantasizers throwing themselves into the river and hoping they don’t sink. It’s ultimately what we’ve all become used to doing with our lines of credit and the powerful agitprop of capitalistic culture. Wall Street: convincing Americans that in order to grow your money you have to risk it. And dumb cluck Americans buying into the Orwellian dream.

Gekko is under no illusion how he retains his 1% status. He tells the naive Bud that insider trading (the corrupt kind) is the difference between riding in a private jet and owning a private jet. He’s brash (“I’ll talk atcha!”), he spouts the most amusing axioms (“A fool and his money are lucky enough to get together in the first place”); he rationalizes his unethical practices (“Money itself isn’t lost or made. It’s simply transferred from one perception to another”); he coaches Bud in Sun Tzu’s The Art Of War. In essence, Gekko tempts Bud like a modern Mephistopheles, gradually claiming more and more of Bud’s soul, as Bud acquiesces to performing more dangerous and fevered favors for Gekko in the pursuit of treasure. I’m sure TWO AND A HALF MEN was not part of the equation…

No matter how big of a dog you think you are – there’s always a bigger dog. The dog bigger than Gekko is Terence Stamp as Sir Larry Wildman. He’s richer, scarier and Britisher. Gekko puts Bud on Wildman’s tail for inside info, exploiting Bud’s hunger and rewarding him with riches.

WALL STREET is the same parable espoused in TRADING PLACES (1983): engage in insider trading, lose your shirt. That is, being drunk on power makes you as likely to screw up and go to jail as being drunk on alcohol. Bud’s downfall looms as he moves into a swank penthouse apartment (decorating it in 80’s Gaudy), scores a sophisticated blonde, Darien (Daryl Hannah), and develops a penchant for preparing sushi for dinner. His hubris would lead him to try brokering a deal to chop up the small airline company where his father is a union boss.

Of course, the downfall of the padawan presages the downfall of the Master…

By the late 80s, it was established that the richest 1% in America “owns half the country.” Gordon Gekko would make a speech that would become infamous for the catch-phrase “Greed is good,” making it seem as 80s-dated as Adam Ant, but the speech is relevant in 2011 for various reasons. The opening phrase, “You do it right – or you get eliminated” is still the model for everyone in business – except for the corporate dishonest who do it wrong and still get rewarded (the “Too Big to Fail” asshats).

It is ominous that even back then, director Stone and corporate raiders were acknowledging that the USA was run by corporations; what they couldn’t predict was that greed would not save the corporate model but set it up for takeover by other countries with a better grasp on capitalism.

…The new law of evolution in corporate America seems to be Survival of the Unfittest. Well, in my book you either do it right – or you get eliminated… I am not a destroyer of companies. I am a liberator of them. The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies and cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed in all of its forms, greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge, has marked the upward search of mankind, and greed – you mark my words – will not only save Teldar paper but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.
— Gordon Gekko, WALL STREET.

Will that “malfunctioning corporation” ever learn its lesson when there’s a steal-from-the-poor-and-give-to-the-rich bailout around every corner?

In the end, both Gekko and Bud have met their downfall, Gekko ending up in jail and Bud ending up in TWO AND A HALF MEN.

END

Keanu and Patrick’s Excellent Adventure.

Dudes, dial the overacting down to a 7.

In POINT BREAK, Patrick Swayze is Bodhi, a surfing bankrobber – or is that a bankrobbing surfer? – on the Los Angeles coast. Keanu Reeves is FBI undercover agent, Johnny Utah (I know, you can’t even think that name without overacting), hot on the tight tail of Bodhi – but not before catching some totally tubular sets, brah!

Gary Busey is Pappas, Utah’s crazy-eyed superior, who actually opened an Overacting School for Mad People. And John C. McGinley, as the scathing FBI Chief, goes to the top of Busey’s class, majoring in Shouted Clichéd Insults.

The cute hook is that Bodhi’s gang of bankrobbers disguise themselves as ex-presidents of the United States: Bodhi himself is rubber-masked Reagan, accompanied by LBJ, Carter and – of course – the crook, Nixon. The other cute hook is how Utah goes undercover with Bodhi’s bodacious gang and becomes unnaturally affected by Bodhi’s man-essence, thereby clouding his resolve on bringing the bankrobber to justice.

Before he goes undercover, Utah is hesitant about learning to surf on a noticeably valley-boy board, “Why can’t I just walk around with this thing under my arm, act stoned, ask some questions?” Uh, Keanu, isn’t that already your Acting Method?

Kathryn Bigelow directs, paying especial attention to all the sinewed male muscle and nekkid woman-flesh to keep her teen demo happy. Funny thing is, POINT BREAK does actually skim along like a greased board on Hawaiian neckbreakers, never letting us out of its action grip, or its bro-tastic overacting and über-cheese one-liners:

Bleach blond badboy cuke

“Let the girl go!”
“I can’t let you do that!”
“It’s just you and me, brah!”
“Noooooooooo!”
“There’s a new thing called radar – maybe you’ve heard of it!”
“Sorry, I can’t do that, brah!”
“When they fall on you, you won’t back down. They’ll have to burn your ass to the ground.”
“You wanna ride to glory, fine! But don’t take Tyler with you. Tell me where she is – and I walk away.”
“You crossed the line. People trusted you and they died!”
“You’re gonna go down. It’s gotta be that way.”… all delivered with such stoner brio you’ll get a contact high if you sit too close to the screen.

The only actor who really has a handle on his character is Patrick Swayze. He is so hip into his bleach-blond rebel it hurt my poetry slam nerve; analytic, yet impetuous, pushing life to the edge, super cool in body, mind and spirit. We can see Swayze is in prime athletic condition just by the way he skydives – tumbles out of a plane with his legs held straight along his bent-double sinewy body; using that smoldering sensuality to entrap not just women viewers, but Johnny Utah as well, who can’t seem to just shoot him and be done with it – the iconic scene where Utah has the drop on Bodhi, but chooses not to drop him, instead shooting his gun into the air while screaming in what we surmise is unfulfilled sexual tension.

At one point, Utah tells Pappas he’s been tailing Bodhi all day, with a cheeky wink to the audience, “He goes into Patrick’s Roadhouse for awhile…” – ROAD HOUSE (1989) being Patrick’s OTHER movie stacked top to bottom with quotable über-cheese…

POINT BREAK resolves as cheesily as it began, with Utah arresting Bodhi on an Australian beach (with American actors doing the most idiotic Aussie accents you will ever hear outside of an Outback Steakhouse commercial). My question is: does Utah really have authority to arrest Bodhi in another country? He might be able to recommend Bodhi’s arrest or extradition, but to actually click the cuffs on him during a fifty-year storm after a bromantic tussle in the waves?

But there’s one last twist to Utah’s sexual tension: Bodhi begs to go down not like a caged animal, but with one last slammin’ wave to the face, so Utah uncuffs him, obviously fantasizing that wave as his own lower torso; Patrick’s credo from his ROAD HOUSE days spiraling like sensual butter through Utah’s head: “I want you to be nice until it’s time to not be nice.”

You got it, brah!

END

On The Road To Nowhere.

There is only one good thing in WILD HOGS: Peter Fonda. And he’s a cameo ten minutes before the end.

Naif director Walt Becker helms this listless, laughless tale of four suburban friends pushing middle-age crisis who hit the open road as wannabe bikers to taste “freedom” and come smack up against real bikers and get their asses kicked, learning the obligatory life-lessons about friendship, loyalty and how to take an ass-kicking.

John Travolta, Tim Allen, Martin Lawrence and William H. Macy are four solid friends, Sunday riders who decide to hit the open road on their weekend machines to alleviate the boredom of their suburban existences. Unfortunately, it does nothing to alleviate OUR boredom.

Calling themselves Wild Hogs, due to Allen’s wife having sewed the patches onto their leathers, they eschew their safe coffeehouses (where every faux biker pretends toughness before discussing chamomile and chiffon) for the dangerous freeway, where bugs, crows and curbs are their greatest enemies….

The banal gay gags and indolent plot come to a screeching halt when the four come across a real bike gang called the Del Fuegos, led by Ray Liotta, who send them packing. Travolta accidentally blows up the Del Fuego bar, which brings down a vendetta on the four Sundays. Trying to hide in a small town, they are discovered and get the aforementioned chamomile kicked out of them, with Travolta overacting enough for Charlton Heston to call and tell him to dial it down to a 7.

Just as Liotta is about to deliver the justifiable and wholly welcome killing stroke on our Sundays, warning them “Stay off the road! It’s my highway!” Peter Fonda, as an O.G., thunders up and saves the necks of the Sundays, rasping at Liotta, “It’s MY highway!”

And everything is cool. And that’s all I want to remember of this joyless joyride.

END

Identity Cleft.

More than a murder mystery. More than a psychological thriller. More than a horror movie. IDENTITY is its own special slice of crazy.

With most viewers being either misled by this movie’s similarities to Agatha Christie’s TEN LITTLE INDIANS, or just pompously broadcasting their knowledge that IDENTITY was inspired by it, they missed the point this was not a “murder mystery” per se, instead, a finely-crafted journey through the mind of a multiple personality during the course of purging his violent personas.

Ten guests are flood-stranded at a Nevada Motel; among them, John Cusack, former cop and Go-To Everyman, Rebecca DeMornay (almost unrecognizable with her ample boob-job and burgundy hair, playing a character whom she is assuming the mantle of with each passing botox-ed day – a woman who “used to be that actress”), Amanda Peet (whose stage direction was simple – “Back that booty up some more, honey!”), John C. McGinley playing against type as an uber-dweeb, Jake Busey playing exactly his type – uber-psycho, Ray Liotta – always darkly mysterious…

One by one, these refugee guests start dying all Agatha Christie-like.

A Vegetable Split

Intercut with this storyline is a somber eleventh-hour appeal by doctors and lawyers to an ill-tempered judge to stay an execution of a deranged man (Pruitt Taylor Vince, his jerky eyes doing double time Pong). We are intrigued as to how these two disparate tales are related, but we do sense a connection, because the dry, somber doctors are talking about a “killer” and in that wet parallel Motel story there are killin’s galore!

By the end of the second act, after the film’s most hair-raising moment, when all the corpses at the Motel are found missing, it is revealed the Motel scenes have been taking place within Pruitt’s psychopath mind, and each Motel guest was merely one of his multiple personalities.

Have I given away too much? Is it just another Patrick-Duffy-shower-scene cop-out? All this rain-drenched piling in and out of rooms like the Spanish Inquisition with shocked pusses was merely a psychopath’s IMAGINATION? Guess again. Director James Mangold and writer Michael Cooney are only half-finished with their sleight-of-hand.

The true “twist” of the movie is that the doctors in the real world believe they successfully purge the psychopath’s “killer” persona, but in the last few seconds, we discover the cure did not go deep enough.

With all the options this movie had – to blame spirits from an Indian Burial Ground or to wrap on a Patrick Duffy note at any point, the writers led us on a merrier, more interesting goose chase. It is clever without being snide, shocking without being implausible.

Thus, this deponent sayeth: Bravo to the road less traveled.

On the other hand, my “feminine personality” thought the movie brutalized women too overtly and my “killer psychopath” personality is going to make the film-makers pay for giving away my secrets…

END