in 1987 the stock market crashed , and oliver stone 's wall street was released to critical acclaim and packed movie houses .
wall street lucked out in its timing ; the recent crash gave the film a resonation it might not of had , and though its kill - or - be - killed approach to business was exaggerated , that very ideology was keyed into the mind set of the quintessential reagan - era businessman .
stone constructed his film as a mythical good vs .
evil tale relayed in the fast - paced milieu of the burgeoning stock exchange .
critics and audiences lauded wall street , elevating its status to that of a contemporary classic .
i 'm proud to say that i will never be counted as one of them .
i found wall street to be just as axiomatic and pandering as the majority of stone 's output with its thin caricatures , obvious sentiments , and a charisma barren performance by the young charlie sheen .
stone goes for broke in every scene ( the same could be said for nearly all of his works ) .
this approach tends to bury his purported message beneath a heap of good intentions .
he directs stock exchange scenes in typical hyperbolic mode with people shouting into phones as if they were in a plummeting airplane .
it 's all an excuse for stone to ratchet up the emotion with false intensity , rather than explore what these situations are really like .
i have a feeling the brokers would be psychologically manipulative ( as they are presented in boiler room ) rather than laughably over the top .
these guys are salesmen after all , not televised judges .
more than anything i am baffled by why so many adore wall street .
the only possible solution i can muster is its release date .
and not just the timeliness of the " greed is good " subject matter : the film was plumped down in the eighties , a decade in which the one - joke comedy rose to an art form , and a group of glamorous brat packers smirked their way through inane high concept , low result movies .
in my mind , the eighties will forever be remembered as a decade with not only a proliferation of bad movies , but bad music , bad hair , and bad clothes .
maybe stone 's after school special set in wall street was viewed as a welcome change of pace .
boiler room is an equally well - timed film with some similarities to stone 's piece of crap .
they both feature a consequential father - son relationship , though boiler room 's is much more subtle and touching .
and they are both concerned with the power of greed , yet the men in boiler room are akin to poseurs presuming to be big shots rather than the slippery - smooth , heartless gordon gecko figures of wall street .
boiler room is a message movie as well , though ( at least until the end ) does n't shove it in our faces .
boiler room is about the pursuit of cash and the degrees to which people will go for that cash .
as i said , this film is indeed timely in a society where who wants to be a millionaire
is the number one prime time show every day ( bringing about a revolution of prime time
tv watching that has n't been seen in quite a while ) ; not only do we want to be millionaires , we want to watch other people become millionaires !
in our super - judgmental , power - oriented culture the desire for money supersedes everything ; when you have money , you have it " all " .
and seth ( giovanni ribisi )
wants it " all " the easy way .
he 's a well - intentioned college drop out who gets lured into working for an illegally run brokerage firm ( the kind that sells junk stock )
whereupon he meets others just like him .
ben affleck is cast as jim , the company headhunter , who struts in commanding the room like a frat boy gordon gecko .
his job is to influence trainee 's into becoming enthusiastic employees by giving a speech that subtly attacks their man hood .
it 's ironic that he sells these pups the same load of b . s that they 're told to dish out to prospective buyers .
affleck 's character is obviously supposed to recall alec baldwin 's similar character in glengary glen ross , and that proves detrimental to the actor 's performance .
affleck shouts , curses and be - littles
his rookie employees just like baldwin , minus the edge .
when alec played the scene he became the part , spewing those brutal lines as if they were his own .
by comparison affleck simply looks as if he were doing a really hammy line reading .
the brokers approach their job with the fervor of overzealous jocks : they storm to work like football players on the way to the big game .
rap music thumps on the soundtrack effectively illustrating who these guys think they are : intellectual gangsters .
they are n't above a rumble as a test of man hood especially during leisure time where the lumbering scott caan seems all too eager to use his fists in minor disputes .
we drink up this world along with seth , and watch him become seduced by it , just like we might be .
as in all cautionary tales , boiler room begins with seducing us into its illustrious world of profit and wrongdoing , then smacks us with the consequences of all the recklessness .
i know this story .
we all do .
but it can work if it 's told with intelligence and energy , and that is how writer
\ director ben younger tells it .
as a director of ( please excuse my french ) mise - en - scene younger has much to learn .
his style is sitcom bland .
but his writing is n't .
younger 's script is well studied in the vernacular of this bunch ; his dialogue is like a junior david mamet .
despite the moderate camera work younger fills his phone - pitch scenes with tension that comes from just the performances and the tightly wound script .
the brokers \ hucksters counter every customer objection , gently bullying them into buying stock .
these moments are filmed like psychological action scenes :
a tense confrontation between a victimizer and a victim who is n't aware that he is one .
with the exception of affleck 's brief appearances , the performances are truly exceptional .
ribisi , who has the edgy looks of a character actor , is extremely potent here , working his pale angular face , and eerie , plaintive stare for all their worth .
he conveys child - like vulnerability ( his character seems to hide in a corner whenever things are n't going his way ) in some scenes , and in others he 's ferociously cut throat .
the jekyll and hyde contradiction works well in the movie
: ribisi is confident when it 's just him and the phone , but cowardly in front of authority figures including his abrasive father ( authoritatively played by ron rifkin ) .
boiler room thankfully avoids wall street - like histrionics in the sales - pitch sequences ; the sales build slowly like a crescendo of intelligent psychological ploys .
those ploys are taught to seth by chris ( vin diesel ) , a kind broker who alternates between seth 's friend and his mentor .
diesl shines in his minor role .
this week i saw the sci - fi opus pitch black in which diesel plays a completely different role in an equally effective manner .
in that film he has the kind of role that might have gone to arnold schwarzenegger in the 80 's , and in boiler room he has the kind of role that might have gone to elliot gould in the 70 's .
nicky katt is also memorable as a superior broker obsessed with what he ca n't have .
nia long , as the firm 's secretary , ( a lone black women amongst many white men ) is ribisi 's love interest in a part that at first looks to be as insignificant as most of the parts this talented actress gets , but develops into something more interesting .
the two make an oddly likeable couple .
long is smart and brash , and ribisi is charmingly aloof .
at one point he says to her
"
i 'm just lookin ' for some chocolate love " .
it 's a terrible line but ribisi delivers it in such an innocuous child - like way , it becomes sweetly endearing .
unfortunately , towards the end , the boiler room turns a tad schmaltzy .
there is much crying , hugging , and sorrowful stares .
this is okay when taken in small doses , but younger 's conclusion is constructed as a series of these boo - hoo moments , one following the other .
a particular misstep is his attempt to show the effect that seth 's manipulations have on one of his poor victims .
it 's not a bad idea but the execution is lacking , with those scenes feeling tacked on to further spell out the message .
that message being , " greed is bad " .
yes it 's patently obvious , but boiler room conveys it by introducing us to a culture that i have n't seen much of in the movies :
the disenfranchised twenty something entrepreneur .
and all wall street did was
introduce us to a simplistic fantasy world of saints and sinners .
boiler room offers neither extreme .
it gives us what is in between , and for that i am thankful .
Output: P