Wall Street

Remove the restless camera pyrotechnics and incomprehensible jargon, and you have a corny old melo: broker Charlie Sheen (green) perpetrates illegal practices to please surrogate poppa/company-trader Douglas (tough), a mega-villain mastermind who spits out absurdities like 'Lunch is for wimps' and longs to destroy his rival Stamp (lost). Soon Charlie's climbing the ladder in search of a fast buck and a flash fuck: Hannah (vacuous). Inevitably, he descends into a mire of insider-dealing, Faustian intrigue, and personal betrayal, culminating in his responsibility for Douglas' near-liquidation of the company where Sheen Sr (natch) is an Incorruptible Working Class Hero union rep. Charlie's cured, of course, by the most clichéd comeuppance of 'em all - family illness - which he should have foreseen, given the homespun homilies about abysses and doom repeatedly offered by full-time office soothsayer Holbrook (solemn). Dramatically inept, the film also muddles its naïve moralising: though condemnatory of avarice and dishonesty, Stone seems seduced by the financiers' luxurious lives and frantic energy, and even expects us to sympathise with the ghastly Charlie's final regret and redemption.