'Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps' Review

I haven't seen Oliver Stone's "Wall Street" (1987) starring Michael Douglas, but after reading a review that said that the juxtaposition with the sequel, "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" was nearly lost, I suppose I don't regret not watching it immediately before. I will, however, watch it at some point.

Shia's LaBeouf's character, Jake Moore, is the young up and coming proprietary trader who can either choose the route of greed or play it honorably. Near the beginning of the film Moore is attempting to get revenge on the man he blames for his mentor's death, with the help of Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas), but then his sole focus becomes a fusion project, and his means of funding become flawed, which, in my opinion, temporarily puts him in a category far more 'villainous' than Gekko's character. Gekko, meanwhile, initially seems to yearn to reconnect with his daughter --who also happens to be Moore's girlfriend and who basically blames Gekko for everything that has gone wrong in her life (and almost the world in general) in the subsequent years after his arrest-- but so quickly uses her for his own selfish means. However, the film then appears to become more of a story of atonement for Gekko's character with only a split-second of the 'Greed is Good' personality, accompanied by the slicked back hair look I'm sure fans from the original appreciated.

I'm still trying to recover from the "we've lost it all, the world is going to burn!" moment that took place in the film that seemed to fizzle as quickly as it broke ground. I feel that is a storyline Stone should have played up more. Let's see the gritty reality of losing mass of amounts of money, pandemonium from different angles of society, and then trying to rebuild. Also, if I never see another bubble or hear the word again in my life, I will be just fine. Yes, I get it: Stock market, real estate, economic and tulip bubbles. Stone's not very subtle imagery and overused "bubble" references become laughable. Now I'm wishing that I had kept count.