Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps - B

In theaters. Rated PG-13, 133 minutes. Trailer.

Director Oliver Stone returns to Wall Street for the sequel to his seminal 1987 film. Michael Douglas revisits his most famous character, Gordon Gekko, with Shia Lebouf, Carey Mulligan, Frank Langella and Josh Brolin along for the ride. We rejoin Gekko leaving prison in 2001 and then immediately flash forward to 2008 before the collapse of the financial markets. Lebouf is Jake Moore, a young investment banker on the come in the new Wall Street; his live-in girlfriend is Gekko's daughter, Winnie a successful "lefty blogger." As the financial markets near collapse in the Fall of 2008, Jake looks to his mentor, Louis Zabel (Langella) for direction but finds none. Click below for more on an interesting film:

Zabel is a stand-in for the real life Robert Fuld at the sacrificial lamb Lehman Brothers (the film assumes the viewer is conversant in the financial meltdown and the way it has been unraveling). As Jake's mentor and his firm melts down, he lashes out at billionaire big wig Bretton James (Brolin) whom he blames for the problem. He and James eventually reconcile for a time. The film pivots around the relationships and along the way reveals several facets of the characters and the nature of greed.

I thought Lebouf would ruin the film, but I thought he was great as the 'new capitalist'. Brolin is his predictable genius as the brash billionaire Bretton James - he oozes cockiness and excess while he explains his art collection and says his 'walkaway number' is "more". Douglas returns to respectable work after Ghosts of Girlfriends Past and nails the weary but still scheming Gekko, especially in the closing portions of the film. Mulligan is obviously a great actress and nails the highs and lows her character experiences, but she is not remotely attractive which renders her character unbelievable in that world. The 95 year old Eli Wallach is superb as the eery wise man.

The film is uneven, soaring to an A in some places and annoying and boring me in others. I loved all of the scenes portraying the actual meltdown and especially, especially the scenes inside the Fed as the fate of the world's financial system fell to a few well-heeled souls around a conference table. Those scenes are an exhilirating imagining of what had to have happened. As with Stone's W., I was very surprised by the restrained tone and even-handed political bias of the film. Bretton James is a 'bad guy', but his discussion during the conference scenes with the Henry Paulson stand-in shows the predicament the government was in - bail out and socialize and reward those that should suffer or risk a global crisis.

Stone's direction is exceptional. The Manhattan skyline is so prevalent that it nearly becomes a character in the film.

Worth your time, especially if you read the business section.