Lee Gates hosts a successful TV show about investment tips. Posing as a deliveryman, Kyle Budwell invades the show, hangs a bomb vest round Gates' neck, and threatens to blow him up live on air unless he gets an explanation as to why an investment tipped by Gates left him penniless. As time slips away, the police try to figure out how to shoot Budwell without activating the deadman switch he holds.Money Monster - the name of Gates' TV show - is a simple, straightforward thriller. The linear story has no great plot twists, there are no huge surprises other than a general uncertainty as to exactly how it will end and, in many ways, this is a completely routine example of this type of movie.But it has three great performances at its centre. Up and coming English 25-year old Jack O'Connell as Kyle, gives a portrait of a man who is juggling a number of different problems, any one of which could push him over the edge and possibly already has. He is seriously scary and hugely sympathetic at the same time, a monster hiding a mouse. Julia Roberts, a serious contender for My Least Favourite Actress, is very good indeed as studio producer Patty. Just about to quit and take another job, she remains in place and uses incredible resourcefulness to keep both Lee and Kyle alive while simultaneously trying to track down the true story of what happened to Kyle's investment.And George Clooney as Lee shows us a man who is vain, thoughtless, shallow and cowardly, yet who hasn't entirely lost touch with decent values as he endures a situation which turns out to be something of an epiphany for him.What happened to Kyle's investment isn't vastly surprising, although the details of it and the piecemeal discovery are quite good fun towards the end of the movie. If I had a criticism, it is that there are wider issues (the morality of high finance generally) which are not addressed, but that doesn't matter too much: the film is mostly screamingly suspenseful. I'm not offering any spoilers about the ending, though - you'll just have to go and see it.Jodie Foster's direction, the performances, and a decent script elevate this straightforward thriller to well above average.

I was completely engaged and thrilled all towards the end. Wanted to have a little more of drama unfold at the end but watched it after so long of its release.Should have watched it earlier.

(Originally reviewed: 23/02/2017) Jodie Foster's most recent picture is not necessarily a bad one, just a borderline average and uninspired one, that like Elysium, can't sustain a decent story from beginning to end. Now I loved 2011's The Beaver and considered it one of the best films of that year, there she was dealing with the subject of clinical depression, and the film was both sad and very funny, with its dark blend of comedy, but with 'Money Monster she has gone backwards, the story isn't particularly interesting and the second half is a typical string of clichés where's the bad guy and the hostage take a trip outdoors, and I'm sick of this type of film; the picture does not end with a bang but with a shrug of the shoulders, and I expect much better from a talented director like Foster.The story is very ordinary and routine; Clooney play's Lee Gates, a Television host who advertised a trust that could not be trusted, this lost people a lot of money, and one man in particular played by Jack Connell (Kyle Budwell) decides he has to do something about it, so he walks through security and interrupts the show, creating a hostage situation, but in truth only one man is in real danger of being shot, and that's Lee, his Boss played by Julia Robert's talks to him through an ear piece letting him know what's happening outside of the situation and so forth, but Kyle is aware there just staling so the police can get there and defuse the situation, during this Kyle rants about what he wants, or doesn't and not much is actually revealed till the half way point, until his pregnant wife gets brought there to speak to him through a live television feed and pretty much humiliates him on live TV, he gets angry sits down with his back turned and one by one hostages leave the building via the police and that's when it gets absolutely routine. They find out that the man in charge of the company played by Dominic West (Walt Canby) is actually behind his money loss and from then on it's a literally slow pursuit to confronting him about it, and if you have seen a film about hostage negotiations before, you'll know someone gets shot, and the film ends with two people eating takeaway while watching the TV reveal the politician's corruption and that's basically the entire film, and at the end of it all, I wasn't impressed, I felt the whole thing felt largely uninspired, and lacked originality all the way through.There are positives though; the performances are good, George Clooney and Jack O'Connell are especially good, Julia Roberts is decent, Dominic West is pretty good and Lenny Venito is adequate as well, as Lenny the Cameraman, but in truth the performances were all watchable to an extent, with the exception of a bland Caitriona Balfe who play's CEO Diane Lester, a pretty face but not much else. I also thought Foster's direction was solid, the picture wasn't overlong and there is a couple of good individual scenes in the first half or so, which includes a decent sense of humour. However there was too much wrong for it to be a good film, including the uninspired writing, clichés and oh so predictable moments, and some real howlers like the dumbest security I've ever seen in a film, when a guy walks past with two boxes, they sit on their fat arses and simply let him in without asking for ID or for him to sign, which is completely unrealistic, and Clooney's character doing this stupid dance that was rather embarrassing. Overall the picture is merely forgettable, uninspired and can't outrun its predictable clichés and routine feel.

George Clooney plays one of those financial news network know-it-alls, rolling up his sleeves and getting to work upping his predictions about some stocks and damning others. He's self centered and petty. He wears costumes and does the macarena at the introduction to his show, which is shot on a New York set full of elaborate displays of electronic junk. Julia Roberts, the show's director, is in the control room behind a glass panel, providing the voice in his ear. Then, during one routine but colorful show, Jack O'Connell sneaks onto the set, holds everyone at gunpoint and makes Clooney don an explosive vest. O'Connell, an ordinary working stiff from Queens, has lost his life saving investing in a stock that Clooney had pimped and that had then dropped like a plumb line, just like mine always do. O'Connell angrily queries Clooney about the $800 million lost in one day by Ibis Corporation. Well, the situation is tense, I can tell you.The technology was sometimes over my head. There were TV cameras and monitors all over the place and prominent use was made of smart phone like Blackberries and Blueberries and everybody is texting one another and shouting into microphones and making sure their earplugs were properly seated in the external auditory canals and I don't know what all. This sometimes induced a confused state of consciousness but didn't interfere with the essence of the plot. The CEO of Ibis had used a manual override on the algorithm (or "algo") and sneakily caused the stock to drop after shorting it. Something like that, anyway. Clooney, having just found this out, accuses the CEO of fraud. But is it? It sounds more like larceny of some sort, or maybe embezzlement. No matter.It was directed by Jodie Foster, who is smart and who knows her way around cameras. She does a decent enough job but the details of the script are torturous and sometimes you can get lost in them. Who's shouting to whom around here? And how in the name of Bog could she have let O'Connell get away with waving that pistol around so wildly -- and holding it sideways, something that became a cliché many years ago. It made me wince.Clooney is fine, as usual. He's a pretty good actor. There are a plethora of stars that play action scenes impassively, but when Clooney is batted around the set or has a pistol shoved in his face he looks genuinely scared. Have you ever seen (or imagined) Clint Eastwood or Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sylvester Stallone look truly scared? No? I thought not. The best they can do when threatened with lethal force is look mildly annoyed.Julia Roberts is Julia Roberts, looking no less good without ten layers of iridescent make up. Caitriona Balfe is just fine as Ibis's PR person, formally known as a chief communications officer. She's very sexy and she's Irish. But I felt sorry for the aggrieved Jack O'Connell. He overacts wildly, uses a fake New York City accent (he's Irish too), and has some sort of speech impediment, causing him to deliver a pale simulacrum of his most passionate lines. At the same time, he certainly LOOKS the part of the washed out urban loser.All together, not a bad movie but not a particularly well-done movie either -- not even a glimpse of Maria Bartiromo. Better to have to sit through "Money Monster" than to have invested in Lucent Technology.