Despite it's stellar reputation I never had a desire to see Oliver Stone's Wall Street. And despite it aging quite badly, it's a pretty good drama. It's a drama they don't make very often; a big budget production for adults that's very commercial. Filmic drama theses days is split into two camps; the teen, commercial drama about sex, romance, high school and cheerleaders. And adult drama...gritty, humourless and worthy. But Wall Street embodies 80's drama when two actors could go head to head in an Oscar baiting confrontation and then storm off in a symphony of soft rock or hip, synthy pop-beats.
It's a fairly run of the mill coming-of-age/morality tale set in the high stakes world of the stock-market, excellently told by Mr Stone. I say excellent as, while it's never in doubt what will happen to Sheen, it's the skill in which Stone keeps the audiences expectations hanging as to when it will all kick off. It's really weird seeing Charlie Sheen look this young and naive on screen (following years of goofy comedy and bad paparazzi press) and it's comforting that Michael Douglas's Oscar winning performance as Wall Street shark Gordon Gekko actually lives up to the hype. Douglas as an actor has always been drawn to the anti-hero character and he's never done that better, or with more relish, than with Gekko.
A recommended drama (that I'm sure everyone and their cat has seen by now) and a nice cinematic snapshot of a time in world history when capitalism was let off the leash. That turned out really well now, didn't it.
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