Wall Street (film)

Wall Street is a 1987 film directed by Oliver Stone, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Stanley Weiser. It stars Michael Douglas and Charlie Sheen. The film has a sequel: Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps (2010).

Plot

Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) is a young stock broker trying to make his way on Wall Street by working in an office that offers investment services.

By day he works at Jackson Steinem, and in his spare time he tries to meet one of the great investment moguls he admires: Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas). In the celebration of his birthday, she gives him a box of Cuban cigars, he manages to get his attention in a meeting and reveals classified information that will raise the shares of the airline where his father works. Gekko investigates and decides to hire him as an agent, due to his persistence and to take advantage of his contacts, and thus get classified information from other investors.

Bud discovers that his admired Gordon Gekko is an unscrupulous man, who only cares about money and who would do anything possible to achieve his goals; after apparently convincing him to buy the airline, he discovers that Gekko's real plan is to split up the company and sell it for an immediate profit, even at the cost of putting the employees out of business.

After exposing the deception to the airline unions, he mounts a campaign of financial speculation to sink the company's shares and force Gekko to sell them, thus getting one of his rivals (Sir Lawrence Wildman) to buy the company at low cost and saved it from bankruptcy.

Eventually, Bud Fox is arrested for taking advantage of inside information.

By negotiating with the prosecutor, he manages to reduce his sentence in exchange for helping to uncover Gekko's illegal strategies and put him away.

Cast

Production

The director thought of Richard Gere and Warren Beatty to play Gordon Gekko, but the role was played by Michael Douglas instead. And Tom Cruise wanted to play Bud Fox, but Charlie Sheen beat him to it. The soundtrack was composed by Stewart Copeland, the legendary drummer of The Police.

Themes

The film has become the epitome of 1980s excess, with Douglas arguing that:

"greed, in the absence of a better word, is something good".

Wall Street defines itself through a series of moral conflicts pitting wealth and power against simplicity and honesty.

The character of Carl played by Martin Sheen represents the working class in the film: he is the leader of the Bluestar maintenance workers union. Carl constantly attacks big business, money, mandatory drug inspections, greedy manufacturers and everything else he perceives as a threat to his union.

The conflict between Gekko's constant pursuit of wealth and Carl Fox's left-wing approach are the basis of the film's background. This background can be conceptually depicted by the two parents fighting for control about his son's morals, a concept that Stone had already used in Platoon (Platoon).

On Wall Street hardworking Carl Fox and unscrupulous businessman Gordon Gekko represent the parents. The film's producers use Carl as his voice in the film, a voice he calls for reason amid the creative destruction that results from Gekko's out-of-control personal philosophy.

A major scene in the film is a speech by Gekko at a shareholders' meeting of Teldar Paper, a company he is planning to buy. Stone uses this scene to give Gekko, and by extension the Wall Street riders he impersonates, the opportunity to justify their actions, which he memorably does, calling attention to the waste that America's corporations accumulated during the post-war years and of which he considers himself a "liberator".

Inspiration for the speech "greed is good" It would seem to come from two sources. The first part, in which Gekko complains that the company's management only owns less than three percent of the shares, and that it owns too many vice presidents, is taken from similar speeches and comments made by Carl Icahn with regarding companies he was trying to buy or control. The greed defense is based on a talk given on May 18, 1986 by stockbroker Ivan Boesky (who was later charged with unfair trading practices)., at the UC Berkeley School of Business, when he expressed:

"There's nothing wrong with greed. I want you to know this. I think greed is healthy. It can be greedy and still be well with oneself".

Wall Street is not a global critique of the capitalist system, just of the cynical, quick-profit culture of the 1980s. The "good" in the film they are capitalists, but in a more stable way and they recognize the effort to earn a living.

In one scene, Gekko reacts to Bud Fox's question about the moral value of hard work, citing the example of Gekko's own father, who worked hard all his life and died poor. Lou Mannheim, as an archetype of the wise old man, expresses at the beginning of the film that:

"Sometimes it takes time to achieve good results"

referring to IBM and Hilton. In contrast, Gekko's credo that "greed is good" it typifies the short-term view that prevailed in the 1980s.

Awards

• Oscar 1988 Award: the best lead actor (Michael Douglas).
• Golden Globe Award 1988: Best performance in cinema – Drama (Michael Douglas).
• KCFCC Award 1988: the best actor (Michael Douglas).
• National Board of Review Award 1987: the best actor (Michael Douglas).
• David di Donatello Award 1988: the best foreign actor (Michael Douglas).
• Nastro d'argento Award 1988: the best foreign actor (Michael Douglas).

She also received the 1988 Razzie Award: Worst Supporting Actress (Daryl Hannah).

Sequel

In 2010 the sequel to Wall Street was released, Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps, starring Michael Douglas and Shia LaBeouf, with Charlie Sheen doing a brief appearance as a cameo.