Wall Street ***** (1987, Michael Douglas, Charlie Sheen, Daryl Hannah, Martin Sheen, Terence Stamp) – Classic Movie Review 2068

Co-writer/director Oliver Stone’s 1987 financial drama summons up the get-rich-quick 80s era better than most other movies and added a couple of indelible phrases into the language: ‘greed is good’ and ‘lunch is for wimps’. Though the movie is the archetypal portrayal of 1980s excess and corporate greed, it ironically inspired people to work on Wall Street.

Stone persuaded a reluctant Douglas to play financial wheeler-dealer Gordon Gekko in the aggressive acting style of his father, and it was that style of performance that landed him the Best Actor Oscar that ironically always eluded Kirk Douglas. It is Douglas’s only acting Oscar so far (though he shared the Best Picture Oscar as producer for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest). At the Academy Awards, Douglas rather defensively thanked Stone for ‘casting me in a part that almost nobody thought I could play.’

Michael Douglas’s performance is by far the film’s main acting attraction, for Charlie Sheen is much less eye-catching and compelling in an admittedly far less showy role as the innocent in a corrupt world who tries to catch Gekko’s eye and favour. To be fair, though, Sheen still hits the nail pretty much on the head in one of his best performances, giving exactly what’s required of him, for Stone liked the ‘stiffness’ of Sheen’s acting style and uses effectively it to convey Bud’s naiveté.

It starts in 1985 when Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) has a job as a junior stockbroker with Jackson Steinem & Co but wants to work with his hero Gordon Gekko, a legendary Wall Street player. To impress Gekko, Bud provides him with inside information about Bluestar Airlines, learned in a casual conversation with his father, Carl (Martin Sheen), the union leader for the company’s workers.

Stone’s movie overflows with confidence, style and bravura scenes. The best of the movie is brilliant, mostly the stuff between Douglas and Sheen Jr. But sometimes slickness, shallowness and some unconvincing characters creep in. It’s hard fully to believe in the characters played by Martin Sheen, Terence Stamp or Daryl Hannah as interior decorator Darien, Bud’s trophy girlfriend, for example.

Hannah’s lame performance earned her a Razzie for Worst Supporting Actress and made this the only film to win both an Oscar and a Razzie. Stamp’s character of Sir Lawrence Wildman is modelled on the prominent British financier and corporate raider Sir James Goldsmith.

However, there is a lot of add-on value from a distinguished support cast, which includes Hal Holbrook as Lou Mannheim, Sylvia Miles, James Spader as Roger Barnes, John C McGinley as Marvin, Saul Rubinek, Richard Dysart, Josh Mostel, Sean Young as Kate Gekko, James Karen as Harry Lynch, John Capodice as Dominick, Leslie Lyles as Natalie, Millie Perkins and Liliane Montevecchi as Woman at Le Cirque.

Stone made the film as a tribute to his father, Lou Stone, a stockbroker during the Great Depression. He says his movie ‘is basically a Pilgrim’s Progress of a boy who is seduced and corrupted by the allure of easy money. And in the third act, he sets out to redeem himself.’ He writes the screenplay with his film school friend and Los Angeles screenwriter Stanley Weiser.

The studio wanted Warren Beatty to play Gekko but he was not interested. Stone wanted Richard Gere, but Gere passed too. Stone went with Douglas, though he was advised against casting him by Hollywood insiders.

Stone, Douglas and Sheen reunited for a sequel called Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps in 2010.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2068

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