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DVD Corner: ‘Wall Street’ offers greedy lessons
Mac Olsen
for Spotlight
Rated 14A by Canadian Home Video Rating 2 hours, 6 minutes $21.95 for sing-disc DVD and $28.95 for Blu-ray at www.columbiahouse.ca
As the old saying goes, those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and in 2010, high profile insolvent financial institutions like Lehman Brothers could learn from the 1987’s ‘Wall Street’.
Directed by the left-leaning Oliver Stone, it stars Michael Douglas as Wall Street tycoon Gordon Gecko, Charlie Sheen as the up-and-coming stockbroker, Bud Fox, and his real life dad, Martin Sheen, as his dad, Carl Fox.
The movie opens with Bud Fox working as a low-level stockbroker in a prestigious brokerage firm on Wall Street. He’s aspires to be one of those “yuppies” of the 1980’s, young and upwardly mobile, but his life is going nowhere. That is, until he meets Gecko, whom he idolizes.
“Greed, for lack of a better word, is good,” is Gecko’s trademark statement. He has the air about him to intimidate others, including those he targets with his “green mailing” tactics.
Essentially, it is the practice of purchasing enough shares in a firm to threaten a takeover and forcing the target firm to buy those shares back at a premium in order to suspend the takeover.
Anyway, Gecko goes after certain companies by using the tactic and makes a handsome profit sometimes, but other times he has to cut short his ambitions because his corporate adversaries can make it difficult for him.
Enter Bud Fox, whom Gecko forms a cautious rapport with initially, then grooms him for his role in stock manipulations. It’s not a choice Fox makes easily, as he knows the consequences that will befall him if he’s caught.
Nonetheless, Fox begins the downward spiral and surveys companies for their profit potential. He also gets “insider information” to buy shares in advance of others, thereby driving up the value of those shares and increasing his own profits.
Soon, Fox and Gecko are raking in the big dollars and the young stockbroker buys into the high life – an expensive penthouse, art and the suits. He has it all, including Gecko’s girl, Darien Taylor (Daryl Hannah). Nothing can stop him from reaching the highest heights of living – or so it seems.
His dad, who has worked for an airline company for many years, has a heart attack after he learns Gecko, who bought the company, plans to break it up and sell it off. Shocked to learn of the plan, Bud has to make a hard choice and decides to use his stock manipulation tactics to save the company, although it will come with a high price.
Douglas is a great drama actor – take a look at his role as Robert Wakefield in ‘Traffic’ – and he excels at his role in this movie. Sheen convincingly represents the “yuppie” of the era, with the financial and emotional highs and lows.
Overall, ‘Wall Street’ deserves five stars out of five and should be shown at every business school as a lesson in ethical misconduct.
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