Wall Street – 20th Anniversary Edition (DVD-Video)
Picture:
B- Sound: B Extras: B Film: B+
Even if
2007 weren’t the 20th anniversary of Wall
Street, one of Oliver Stone’s best movies, this would be the exact moment
to revisit it. As the movie slipped
further and further into the memories of viewers, Wall Street has been increasingly characterized by three words:
Greed is good.
Gordon
Gecko (Michael Douglas), corporate raider and all-around sleazeball,
immortalized the phrase “Greed is good” in a show-stopping speech given at a
shareholders meeting for a paper company he controlled. Actually, like so many memorable movie lines,
he never actually says “Greed is good;” rather, he says, “Greed, for lack of a
better term, is good. Greed is right.”
Still, the speech, and the soundbyte became the defining moment in Wall Street. Gecko and his dogma led many aspiring
millionaires to enter the world of stock trading. Even though Gecko is the movie’s
villain. Even though Stone uses “Greed
is good” to catch his protagonist, his doe-eyed Gecko protégé and low-rung
stock trader Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen), in the movie’s moral dilemma—If you sell
your soul, convictions, and family down the river to attain a chic, cushy
lifestyle, what is the cost? In other
words, how good is greed really?
It
depends. If you’re Gordon Gecko, a slimy
character with no empathy or moral hang-ups beyond those that directly concern
him and his family, greed is spectacular and the gateway to every earthly
delight. But if you’re Bud Fox, an
essentially decent fella led astray down a dark path, greed is the worst evil
because it compromises your values and relationships. Stone himself grapples with the value of
greed on the Wall Street DVD
commentary found on this new two-disc set, ported over from the original 2000
DVD release of the movie. He sees how
greed can be good, but at the same sees how greed can corrupt. Like any good laissez-faire moralist
filmmaker, though, Stone ultimately leaves the decision to the viewer.
Stone
spends a good deal of the commentary discussing the making of Wall Street, which leads to an
interesting observation. Near the end of
the movie, Stone remarks about the technology on display. “This is, what, '87,
and it's like a preview of the next 10 years, 20 years.” There is an eerie prescience to this
observation. The commentary track is
seven years old and predates the George W. Bush administration and its radical
expansion of Reaganomics, the economic doctrine that dictated the world Gecko
and Fox inhabit.
“Geed is
good” and Gordon Gecko have become defining symbols of Wall Street, as well as the 1980s.
The decade’s excess brought on by the top-heavy distribution of wealth
in the United States is detailed exactingly in the movie, which was released in
1987. Gecko and Fox, when not overseeing
hostile takeovers, indulge in gaudy homes, enjoy the company of cheap women
attracted by money and obsessed with tacky fashion, and participate in the
inflated art market, dropping millions on a houseful of paintings as a means to
declare their status. They throw money
around as if it grows on trees because, for them, it might as well.
Skip
ahead now to 2007. Ninety percent of
America’s wealth is held by the top one percent of the population. So much of the new housing construction is
deemed “McMansion” construction for its tacky conformity. The art market is such that pieces are being
sold at record prices — earlier this year, one of Andy Warhol’s Disaster works
sold at auction for a staggering $71.7 million; the previous top price for a
Warhol was set in 2006 when another of his works sold for the bargain-basement
price of $17.4 million.
The
similarities between the ‘80s depicted in Wall
Street and today are glaring, and depressing. Stone is right, not much has changed in 20
years.
This
can’t help but characterize how you watch Wall
Street today. Ten years ago, the
movie was a curio of the ‘80s. Watching
it was like opening up a time capsule.
You could chuckle at the styles and tastes of the ‘80s from the safe
distance of a decade of history. Now,
it’s not that easy. Gordon Gecko
influenced an entire generation of brokers, and many of them thought Gecko was
real. In the newly-produced documentary
included on the 20th Anniversary Wall
Street DVD, “Greed is Good,” many, many, many people admit to believing or
knowing people who believed that Gecko was real and that he was a role
model. If those people are still in the
business today, they are likely in that top one percent controlling 90 percent
of the nation’s wealth. Is Wall Street, then, a movie to be
reviled?
It’s
difficult to say because it’s such a good movie. Stone’s direction is top-notch, and it’s
given a decent 1.85:1 widescreen presentation here, though it’s spotty in
places and could use a cleaning. Stone
uses a lot of tracking shots to simulate the liquidity of the stock market, but
he uses static shots and close-up two-shots just as much to emphasize the human
element of what can be (and probably is) such an inhuman profession. The acting is similarly excellent. Douglas won the Best Actor Oscar for his
portrayal of Gecko, and rightly so. He’s
every bit as reptilian as the name implies, but he oozes bucket-loads of
charisma and it’s not wonder Bud — and aspiring stock brokers everywhere — were
seduced by him. Sheen is exceptional,
too, as the petulant and impatient blue-collar twentysomething looking to stake
his claim. The supporting cast —
including Martin Sheen as Bud’s father and Darryl Hannah as Bud’s love interest
and Gecko’s pawn — add pop to the sizzle Douglas and Charlie Sheen bring to Wall Street. The movie is dialogue heavy, and the disc’s
5.1 and 4.0 Dolby Surround mixes do a more than adequate job enveloping you. Rounding out the set on disc two are the
documentaries “Greed is Good” and “Money
Never Sleeps — The Making of Wall Street,”
which was on the original disc, and deleted scenes with optional commentary.
Conspicuously missing are the theatrical trailers found on the 2000 DVD
release.
While the
movie is of undeniable quality, its implied social impact is problematic. If Wall
Street and Gordon Gecko at all inspired the Enrons and Tycos and other
white-collar criminalities that have occurred in this decade and have led to
this age of exorbitant wealth, then that must be incorporated into the
discussion of the movie. Watching Wall Street today is difficult in light
of what has transpired in George W. Bush’s reconstitution of Reagan-era
economic policy: the all-but-extinct middle class, declining health care system,
crumbling educational system, out of control energy costs, and on and on. Not only is it difficult to watch Gecko with
anything less than contempt, it’s hard to watch Fox and sympathize with him as
someone who wants to be a part of that world.
Near the
climax of Wall Street, Gecko is
comforting-nay-manipulating recently-jaded Fox over a deal to buy out Bluestar,
the airline Bud’s dad works for. Gecko
hisses to Fox, “Now you're not naive enough to think we're living in a
democracy, are you buddy? It's the free market. And you're a part of it.” That sentiment, perhaps more than the
infamous “Greed is good,” is the resonant — and disturbing — truth of Wall Street. And it’s truer today than it was in 1987.
- Dante A. Ciampaglia
