Wall Street | | Cast : | Charlie Sheen, Michael Douglas | | Director : | Oliver Stone | | Studio : | Twentieth Century Fox Home Video | | Format : | Color, Widescreen, Closed-captioned, Dolby | | Released Date : | December 11, 1987 | | DVD Released Date : | February 04, 2003 | | Language : | French (Dubbed), English (Subtitled), English (Dubbed), English (Original Language), French (Original Language), Spanish (Subtitled) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | June 01, 2005 | | Summary | Pride against the honor? | Content
 | Oliver Stone has made his second best movie after JFK, in my opinion with this powerful portrait of greeed and power in the middle of the financial capital of the world.
Gekko is typical character of those ages. It is not a bad guy, he just follows the rules, bets and wins, so what is the point with that?
The newcomer, Charlie Sheen is an idealist young man and his epci consists in twist the fate of this ambitious man who thinks he can move all the chess pieces without any risk.
There is just one complaint of my own. Stone seems just to wash the face to the system he attacks, and somehow this restrained gaze weakens the structure of the script. The good customes and the honesty finally win the game but how long can you smile with this bizarre triumph? and even worst are you sure you can talk about ethics in such atmosphere. Wall Street means risk and failure, competence and disloyalty, no rules just basic instinct if you want to survive.
There are many common places between this film and Donnie Brasco if you think it carefully. It is the figure of the experience against the youth idealism, but remember Hobbes and forget the innocence in the world. You may become as the central figure of Candide's Voltaire if you think the world is composed bu good and bad boys: the question is survive; no matter how high is the prize you pay by that.
Michael Douglas made the best achievement of his career to date. A kinetic script and glorious camera work. |
| Rating | | | Date | May 31, 2005 | | Summary | Entertaining Film, Douglas Is Terrific | Content
| Wall Street is so 1980s and that's not a bad thing!!
Michael Douglas IS Gordon Gecko in this film and that's probably why he walked off with the Oscar for Best Actor at the 1988 Academy Awards in this fascinating look at the high pressure world of the stock market.
While Charlie Sheen was the hot commodity at the time this film was made, his acting hasn't aged well and it's quite clear that a better choice could have been found for this movie, where the same thing can be said for Darryl Hannah who is only slightly better in her role as the high priced artist for sale to the highest bidder (richest boytoy she can find).
Oliver Stone's directing is very good but the backstory relating to BlueStar airlines could have been a little better but perhaps I just don't have very positive memories because of the trite acting by Charlie Sheen.
However, Michael Douglas alone is worth watching this film and its the performance of his career.
**** RECOMMENDED |
| Rating | | | Date | April 17, 2005 | | Summary | GREED IS GOOD, BUT IS THE MOVIE? | Content
| Not having a strong interest or knowledge in the world of stocks and bonds, WALL STREET failed to provide me with a satisfying cinematic experience. Though I have been a fan of Michael Douglas for some time, it seems strange that he won an Oscar for a film in which he has little real screen time. Most of the movie focuses on Charlie Sheen's character, and even though Douglas is perfect in the role of Gordon Gekko, I wasn't overwhelmed by his performance. He won that year over William Hurt (Broadcast News); Marcello Mastroianni (Dark Eyes), Jack Nicholson (Ironweed) and Robin Williams (Good Morning Vietnam). Assuredly, Douglas embodied the corporate greed of Gekko, but it is ultimately a one note performance, without any shadings of real personality. Charlie, meanwhile, in one of his first major roles, is only about 50% effective, and his power comes in the scenes he shares with his father, Martin, who played his father in the film. There are nice supporting turns from James Karen as the duplicitous sales manager; John C. McGinley as Charlie's sometime buddy broker; Terence Stamp as Gekko's British rival; James Spader as a yuppie lawyer; and of course Martin as Charlie's father whom he betrays. Daryl Hannah is awful in a one-note role as Douglas' ex-mistress and Sheen's current honey. Sixties ingenue Millie Perkins has an all too brief cameo as Charlie's mother in the final ten minutes of the movie.
Oliver Stone's movies have always been provocative and WALL STREET is no different. But I have always found myself disturbed by his movies in that they are not the most "entertaining" of films; there's always a message, and this time, the one that "greed is good" just doesn't fill the bill for me. Michael Douglas has given enough great performances that this Oscar to me rewards his body of work rather than this one role. |
| Rating | | | Date | April 03, 2005 | | Summary | Amazing movie... | Content
| Few movies capture the mind and heart as this movie. It is basically about Bud Fox, a sales manager in Wall Street. He deals mostly low-key shares and he is aiming for the big time. He seeks the opportunity to work with Gordon Gecko, a multi-billionaire investor who is smart as he is ruthless. Meanwhile, Bud Fox is also facing his father's criticism about what he does for a living..."Create, instead of living off the buying and selling of other people's money", his father says. I admit, I am addicted to this movie. Every few months, I have to slot in the DVD and watch it. It is a delight to watch every single time. This movie deals with many important and all too real issues. Everybody wants to be rich, but how far would you go to achieve that goal? Is it worth betraying the people you love? Changing your morals and values in life? And when you do make it big, who can you trust? How sure are you? These are just some of the elements Oliver Stone delved into in this movie. Using Wall Street and the share market as his backdrop, he has created a masterpiece.
The first thing that immediately grabs you is the acting. Superb performances from some of the most talented but often misused actors in Hollywood. Michael Douglas has always been one of my favourite actors and in this movie, he IS Gordon Gecko. He is the epitome of corporate power. The way he speaks, and acts....classic stuff. One of my favourite scenes, is when he gives the speech during the shareholder meeting of Teldar Paper. Unbelievably good! He won a truly deserving Oscar for his portrayal of Gecko. Because of Douglas' fantastic acting, it tends to overshadow another actor who is as deserving of praise, Charlie Sheen. To be honest, I am not a fan of Charlie Sheen and found his acting mediocre in many movies, which was why I was pleasantly surprised with his acting here. He was really very good as Bud Fox, looking up to Gecko as his mentor, never overacting and having the coolness to pull off lines like "You get out that door, I'm changing the locks". He plays the part of a young man not knowing exactly what he wants in life once he achieved his idea of success perfectly. And the supporting cast, Martin Sheen (playing Bud Fox's dad with pure emotion, it seems like he's saying what he really means to his son) and Darryl Hannah (as Bud Fox's love interest) does not disappoint.
Kudos to Oliver Stone for writing such a powerful script. This is not the usual garbage Hollywood likes to dump us with...this is a brilliant screenplay with great dialogue. "Greed will not only save Teldar Papers, but that other malfunctioning corporation known as the United States", Gecko says. Heck, even at home, I felt like giving a standing ovation to that. And the camera angles were also something I found fascinating in this movie. For example, when we're first shown Gecko, we don't get to see him immediately. Oliver Stone teases us with a Fortune magazine cover, and then by a shot of his office, when someone enters his office, the door opens and closes just enough time so that we get a glimpse of Gecko and hear his voice but never really getting a good look of him, right until Bud Fox meets with him. And towards the end, when things go wrong, a dark shadow falls upon the office. Beautiful!
Honestly, everything about this movie seems to work perfectly, which is why the 5-star rating. This is one of my all-time favourites and I highly recommend this movie to anyone, whether you're involved in the share market or not, because the scope of this movie extends to so much more than that, that I'm sure different people would appreciate it on different levels. A definite must-see! |
| Rating | | | Date | March 27, 2005 | | Summary | The Street of dreams | Content
| This is Oliver Stone's disection of inside trading on Wall Street and the road to big bucks. Charlie Sheen plays the young broker who sells out his father by revealing some inside information to wheeler dealer Michael Douglas. It's an old-fashioned morality play, though, with Charlie trying to mend his ways. It's a hard-hitting, very well-acted drama - and effective because Stone incorporates all the old ideals of repentence and "crime does not pay." It's a two-actor movie, however, which limits what it could have been. |
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