Gordon Gekko is back. In Oliver Stone's new film Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps issued at the Cannes Film Festival (12th-23rd May). The stock market player Gordon Gekko (again played by Michael Douglas) from the first '87 Wall Street film has come back from prison in 2001 and now sees a financial market even more unscrupulous than when he was swinging it. He predicts the financial crisis in 2008.
As expressed in an interview with French language newspaper Le Monde, Oliver Stone admits to being heavily influenced and inspired by the real financial melt down in the fall of 2008, with major financial players like US insurance company AIG, investment bankers Goldman Sachs, and others that speculated in subprime loans and credit default swaps/CDS (a type of insurance bond operation to protect the buyer from loss if the loan goes into default). The CDS system was overheated and blown up like a hot air balloon, which ended in the collapse of major financial players, later to be bailed out by the state. In the interview, Oliver Stone also expresses that he would very much like American economist and Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stieglitz to see the film. Stone refers to his documentary from the fall of 2009, South of the Border, and to the IMF/International Monetary Fund, an international organization that oversees the global financial system. Stone quotes Stieglitz for saying that the control function of IMF was meant for emerging economies, but that we will have to apply the IMF measures on ourselves one day.
But in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, the story is centered around Jacob Moore (as in 'gimme more', played by Shia LeBeouf), boyfriend of Gekko's estranged daughter Winnie Gekko (played by Carey Mulligan from An Education). Young stock speculant Moore learns the tricks of the trade by Gordon Gekko behind Winnie's back. In some Danish magazines and dailies the film is referred to as average, in some British dailies as a good film, some criticise the length, a little over two hours - or app. 130 minutes. In Le Monde the focus on the sentimental and predictable family story is regretted, when dealing with such a powerful subject. Since most welcome a film on this very topic as highly appropriate. The film premieres in Europe end of September 2010.In the most appropriate way, Paradoxical News has covered this story - not from Cannes - but from afar. For financial melt down reasons.
For further information, please see (photos googled from fortune magazine and imdb.com):