4.5 stars. Rated R, for brief sexual content, violence and frequent profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.13.16
Between this new film, The Wolf of Wall Street, Margin Call and The Big Short, one gets the impression that people have become
deeply concerned about corporate malfeasance and Wall Street shenanigans.
Gee, I can’t imagine why.
Director Jodie Foster’s Money Monster may not be as imaginatively
brilliant as last year’s The Big Short,
but it’s just as entertaining and pointedly audacious. Scripters Alan DiFiore,
Jim Kouf and Jamie Linden set up a hair-trigger premise and then develop it
with an unlikely — but quite successful — blend of suspenseful twists and scathing
humor.
Along the way, they also skewer
the 1 percent who’ve absolutely, completely — and without awareness or shame — abandoned any sense of
comradeship with the rest of us ordinary mooks.
This is only Foster’s fourth
big-screen feature as director, after having cut her teeth with 1991’s poignant
Little Man Tate; she obviously
chooses her projects carefully. “Money Monster” proves that the double
Oscar-winning actress has matured into an equally capable shot-caller. This is
the sort of endeavor that could have collapsed any number of times, in less
skilled hands; she unerringly navigates the ship past all dangerous shoals.
With thoughtful, infuriating,
hilarious and even unexpectedly poignant results.
George Clooney stars as
high-profile financial TV guru Lee Gates, who has built a viewership on the strength
of sideshow antics more befitting the local news clowns who used to dole out
weather predictions while dressed in funny outfits. We get an extended view of
Gates’ smirky, hyperactive — and insultingly patronizing — shtick as he begins
one of his financial analysis/advice segments on an average day, under the much
calmer guidance of longtime producer Patty Fenn (Julia Roberts).
It ain’t pretty.
It’s also a not very exaggerated
jab at what a serious topic such as money management has become, in our cynical,
bread-and-circuses era of cable/satellite infotainment. Any semblance of capably
researched public service has been abandoned — goodness, that would be boring — in favor of keeping the
gullible masses distracted. And hey: If Gates misstates, exaggerates or even
lies today, he won’t even think about amending or retracting tomorrow; he’ll
simply proceed with an all-new set of encouraging prevarications and
half-truths.
Just like dozens of shrill,
malicious and defiantly deceitful radio show hosts.
Trouble is, Gates is a bit stuck.
Everybody has wakened, on this particularly morning, to the ghastly news that Ibis
Clear Capital — a stock that Gates has hyped quite heavily, during the past
weeks — has just “lost” $800 million. The investments and life savings of countless
people have simply vanished, due to what Ibis execs insist was an unforeseen
“computer glitch” in the program algorithm designed to facilitate highly
questionable high-frequency trading (which has become a growing real-world
concern since debuting in the late 1990s).
Accepting absolutely no
responsibility for his involvement in this crisis, Gates blandly opens his show
with a cheerful shrug, insisting that these are the breaks ... and hey, now is
the time to really double down and
buy more Ibis stock, since it’s so
low!
We quickly get a sense, through
Clooney’s performance, that Gates’ vulgar, ostentatious showmanship exists
alongside a deeply rooted contempt for his own audience, whom he likely regards
as the sort of dumb marks who’d repeatedly fall for a street-corner three-card
monte huckster. Then, just as Fenn notices an out-of-place, package-laden delivery
guy lurking at the studio fringes, said intruder bursts onto the set, pulls out
a gun and — after shooting the ceiling, to prove that he’s not kidding —
hijacks the show.
On live TV. As millions of
viewers watch, both throughout the United States and all over the world.
Including folks in Iceland and Korea (!).
The intruder, Kyle Budwell (Jack
O’Connell), is a distraught investor who impulsively put his entire $60,000
inheritance — pretty much all the money he had — into Ibis. He’s scared and
desperate; he’s also furious, and unwilling to accept the vague “computer
glitch” excuse that Gates has just been hearing, via live remote, from Ibis
chief communications officer Diane Lester (Caitriona Balfe).
To emphasize the degree to which
Kyle wants some comprehensible, real-world answers, he orders Gates — at
gunpoint — to don an explosive vest concealed in one of the aforementioned packages:
a vest with a detonator wireless controlled by a dead-man switch that Kyle
holds in one hand. Then he chains and locks all the studio doors.
At which point, things truly get nuts.
The police immediately respond in
massive force, having been mobilized by the same live feed that now has viewers
glued to TV sets in homes, bars, community centers and store windows. The next
step remains uncertain, though, because — from what bomb experts can tell, via
the video feed — the vest contains enough explosive to level the entire
building, along with everything in a 50-foot radius beyond.
By this point, savvy viewers have
recognized that Foster is depicting these events in real time: a narrative hook
maintained throughout the film’s 98-minute running time. That further heightens
the tension, as we wonder where the heck things can go from here.
Unexpected and captivating
places, that’s where.
DiFiore, Kouf and Linden keep us
at the edge of our seats with several clever narrative bumps, while gradually
blending the suspense with dollops of mordant humor (and plenty of well-placed
swipes at the narcissistic, reality-obsessed mania that currently characterizes
American culture).
Clooney is a delight. We’re
accustomed to placing him in roles that reflect his suave intelligence and
self-assurance: somebody who’s the smartest guy in the room. Lee Gates couldn’t
be further from that archetype: He’s a condescending, glad-handing “pretty
face” with no family life, and little respect for his studio colleagues. And
when Kyle shows up, Gates also reveals himself as a sniveling, impotent coward.
But only initially. Once the
crisis settles into a precariously dangerous status quo, Gates’ huckster
instincts resurface, along with his mocking temperament. But something else has
been activated; we see this in Clooney’s narrowed gaze. Something IS rotten,
and Gates’ long-buried investigative instincts kick in as, with Kyle’s manic
prodding, he begins to wonder about the recent activities of Ibis’ jet-setting
CEO, Walt Camby (Dominic West).
Roberts’ Fenn, in sharp contrast
to Clooney, is cool, calm and collected: every inch a capable producer
accustomed to looking simultaneously in a dozen different directions, and
making just as many snap decisions. Fenn appears to like Gates, after a
fashion, but Roberts’ indulgent expressions — particularly the sidelong glances
— denote a woman not the slightest bit willing to tolerate his phony bonhomie.
Gates obviously knows this, and
respects her for it ... but isn’t about to admit as much. They share an
interesting bond, complete with its own crisis password: Sacagawea, which Fenn
soon finds ample reason to use.
O’Connell, last seen playing the
tortured Louis Zamperini in 2014’s Unbroken,
is terrific as the dangerously reckless Kyle: the pluperfect portrait of a
disenfranchised young guy at the last ragged end of his rope. O’Connell powers
him with frightened impulsiveness, while also revealing glimpses of an ordinary
fellow who knows full well that he has orchestrated madness that can’t end
well.
Balfe’s Diane Lester is quite
intriguing, and not only for her beautifully sculpted Irish features. At first
little more than a perfectly outfitted and coifed corporate mouthpiece, Lester
actually is too smart not to get
personally involved with this unfolding crisis. Dennis Boutsikaris, in
deliberate contrast, is revoltingly smarmy as the Ibis CFO.
Giancarlo Esposito strikes the
right note as the take-charge police captain, and Christopher Denham adds some
comic relief as Fenn’s harried production assistant. Lenny Venito, finally,
makes the most of his role as one of the TV cameramen: a sturdy blue-collar
worker to the core.
Foster and editor Matt Chesse
build a terrific head of steam as these events plunge forward, the momentum and
sense of peril increasing alongside Kyle’s mounting instability. The narrative
propels us into an even crazier third act, topped by a coda that cannily
indicts our collectively callous and dangerously short attention spans.
As also was the case with The Big Short, rarely does advocacy
cinema wind up being this entertaining. Aren’t we lucky!
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