Sunday, October 24, 2010

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010)

After some deliberation, I finally caught the film Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. I've been holding it off because I keep thinking it would depress me too much since it is all about crashing markets and bursting bubbles. Considering what I had to deal with when the world's financial markets imploded last year, and the aftermath continuing through this year, I wasn't sure if I could take a 2 hour movie about this exact thing.

Well, since options were limited, I decided to give it a shot and see how it would turn out. Not bad, is what I would say. As opposed to what I feared, it did not drive me to further depression about the current climate in world economics and what it means to us all. It actually put quite an interesting spin on the whole thing - this is not the first time it's happened to us, it will keep coming so we just all have to make sure we know what we want out of life. The question, and it relates to what I wrote in my Korean GP review, has always been: are you a risk taker or someone who plays it safe.

Those who take risks can potentially gain more out of it in the short to medium term. However, for the really unfortunate risk takers, the long term future isn't quite so bright - like Michael Douglas' character in this movie. He ended up in jail serving eight years for what he calls a "victimless crime" by playing with people's hard earned money and assets in a massive global game of chance. However, he managed to get a break by cheating his way through family (which is not uncommon to say the least) and managed to turn his situation around. This is someone who managed to crawl past the "long term" and went further.

The movie is pretty long, and I've seen some critical reviews which marked this movie down for this specific fact. But the way it was filmed, the photography and the innovative use of graphics is really quite something. It does feel long, but it doesn't feel long. I know it doesn't make sense, but I'll try put it simply.

When watching Avatar, if you don't have an intermission in the middle of the film (like they do at Kinepolis in Brussels), you simply do not feel the length. Your entire being is drawn and concentrating on what is happening on the big screen. Especially with the 3D aspect, it really uses all your senses and keeps them occupied. In this Wall Street film, you can feel the time passing by. But it doesn't mean it was boring in any way. It just felt long and quite drawn out in a pretty OK way.

The movie really isn't very bad at all, and it really gets you thinking. Some people have made it their profession and their mark to take risks. On the face of it, these people are taking risks with other people's futures (back to the "victimless crime" aspect). But that isn't entirely true. There are still ways in which people on this kind of level can still be deeply affected. Even if they don't seem to have emotions or hearts at all, everyone has a price. Some, or most, will pay for it while they are on this planet. Others, well... who knows? Maybe if here is a hell, they will pay for it on the other side.

It all comes down to our choices in what we want to be, what we want to do, and what we want our mark is on this planet. Or am I reading too much into this? Hmm...

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