Saturday, May 21, 2016

Money Monster

Thursday night I went with my Mom and Marilyn to see the movie Money Monster.  George Clooney plays Lee Gates, the flamboyant host of a slick investment advice television show (also called Money Monster), and Julia Roberts plays Patty Fenn, his exasperated producer.  Walt Camby (Dominic West), the CEO of Ibis, is scheduled to be a guest on the program to explain why the company's stock inexplicably crashed losing investors over $800 million.  Just as the show is about to go live, Gates learns that Camby is believed to be in Geneva and that Diane Lester (Caitriona Balfe), CCO of Ibis, will be taking his place via a live feed from their corporate office.  As the show gets under way, a man named Kyle Budwell (Jack O'Connell) storms on set with a gun and places a vest, with enough Semtex to blow up the entire building, on Gates holding him hostage on live TV.  Budwell invested his entire nest egg in Ibis stock, on a recommendation from Gates, and wants answers about why it crashed.  As Gates tries to keep Budwell calm, Fenn, trapped in the control room, and Lester, from the IBIS corporate office, work to uncover a conspiracy that stretches from Johannesburg to Seoul to Reykjavik.  It is a taut and entertaining thriller with highly nuanced performances by both Clooney and Roberts, as well as a riveting performance by O'Connell.  It is incredibly suspenseful because the characters are trying to find answers in real-time in the claustrophobia of the set and the control room while the cameras are rolling.  Director Jodie Foster uses the perspectives of the various cameras on the floor quite effectively.  The script is very intelligent, making complicated stock manipulation understandable for a lay audience, and it is often quite funny, especially when a low-level producer is sent running from place to place multiple times.  It seems that indictments of Wall Street have become de rigeur in Hollywood lately and, while this installment isn't quite as scathing as The Big Short, it does, however, show the human cost of corporate greed.  I really enjoyed this movie but both my Mom and sister found all of the profanity to be a bit off-putting.

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