Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010)

Despite the lacklustre reviews, this was always going to be a must-see for me. Fortunately, it surprised mildly to the upside: it's hardly a classic, but I quite enjoyed it -- and I think the same would be true for most people who remember the original Wall Street. 

It's pretty cheesy in parts (a particular low point on this front is the testosterone-drenched motorbike ride between young hot-shot trader Shia LeBoeuf and his would-be mentor Josh Brolin), and relies quite heavily on nostalgic allusions to the original film (the cameo by Charlie Sheen as former Gekko protege Bud Fox is a shameless "where are they now" moment).

The movie's storyline is based around the financial crisis of 2008 (a fairly natural theme, one would imagine, for any film involving the finance industry to be made for the next 10 years or so..). It's fairly well-handled for the most part, although much of the trading floor and board-room scenes are overdone (the meetings at the Federal Reserve, featuring a cast of lookalikes representing the real players, are particularly cringeable -- with bankers trading insults with all the sophistication of a bunch of quarrelling high school kids). 

My favourite part was towards the end where Gekko gets back "in the game". Having spent the first two-thirds of the film on the sidelines -- a shell of his former self reduced to living in a modest (though tasteful) rented apartment -- we finally see him re-emerge in all his cigar-chomping glory: hair slicked back, getting fitted out for bespoke business suits and shoes, and talking the talk in his inimitable "they wouldn't know preferred stock from livestock" style. You almost want to cheer -- almost.