Oliver Stone has always been a director willing to tackle social and political subjects within his films. Whether it's the evils of war, corporate evil, political conspiracy or the influence of mass media, he takes on all of these subjects with intelligence. His first film after the success of 'Platoon' was to look into the shadiness and corruption within stockbroking. It is the story of rookie stockbroker Bud Fox who comes under the wing of Gordon Gekko, an affluent corporate raider whose determination is unparalleled. From this premise the film builds as Bud becomes more involved in Gekko's suspicious business plans whilst getting to experience both the highs and the lows of such dealings.What is most impressive (and positive from an entertainment aspect) is how you don't have to know much about trading or the stock market to enjoy the film. I myself know very little on the matter, yet the film manages to make some rather complicated issues understandable and the dialogue is very snappy throughout which makes it easy to swallow. The dialogue manages to do something very notable, which is make almost everything said sound equally naturalistic and quotable. What the characters say carries enough authenticity to make it sound like something they would actually say, whilst retaining a flair that allows it to be memorable. Gekko's famous ''Greed is good'' speech is a perfect example of this. Bud's conversations with his father and witty interactions with his workmate Marvin provide a nice contrast to the corporate elements. Michael Douglas won the Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of Gekko and it's easy to see why. The character has become synonymous with the business world and the corruption of the stock market. Douglas himself strikes the perfect balance between hammy and intense. The character is very slimy and cunning but he's also magnetic and interesting, and Douglas captures all of these sides without diluting the part. Charlie Sheen also deserves some praise for his solid performance as Bud. It's not an easy role to play given he isn't as brash as Gekko and has play around the characters naivety, yet Sheen leads the film fine and his rigid acting style fitting the role surprisingly well. I think Sheen could have had an interesting career had he stuck with more serious roles.The film is quintessentially 80's and I mean that in the nicest possible way. The fashion, the technology, the cars, the décor, it's all stylised to large degree. The surprising thing is that the film doesn't suffer from feeling dated. I think that this story is so strongly linked to the time period that it manages to suit the stylisation perfectly. Adding to this is Stone's exceptional direction and some very slick editing. Stone's films always have a fluidity and energy to them, which can make even the slowest moments engaging. He also has a good gage how long a scene should go on for and when it is time to move on, none of the scenes here outstay their welcome. The editing also stands out, as with many of Stone's later films everything moves along at a swift pace without coming at the price of any story or character development.I think all the characters are well developed and have clear motivations. The supporting roles are especially important. The always interesting James Spader, Stone's regular John C. McGinley and the great Terence Stamp are all excellent actors and add credibility to their small roles. Martin Sheen as Bud's honest working-class father playing off against his real life son creates an interesting contrast and actually gives the relationship added realism. The only blemish is the wooden Daryl Hannah whose vacant performance is lost here as Bud's girlfriend. Elsewhere, Stewart Copeland provides a very complimentary score. Filled with a lot of ambiance and clattering yet subtle rhythms, it gives the film an edge and works well with many of the visuals.Wall Street is a very memorable film and one that always come to mind when you thing of either the stock market or excess within film. It has retained its power after all these years. I think this is in large part down to the success of its director and cast. Stone proved that once and for all that he was a director of great understanding with this film, whilst the performance of Michael Douglas has pretty much become synonymous with 80's greed and corruption. It isn't a completely flawless film, but it is one that understands its own story and importantly the message it's trying to get across. Throughout the film we ask, will Bud turn out like his greedy mentor or his honest father? It is this dilemma that keeps us gripped and guessing.

Martin Sheen plays a blue-collar worker. You know he's a blue-collar worker because he always wears an unbuttoned blue shirt stained with mechanic's grease, and he hangs out in a classic dive bar in Queens with his burly, beer-drinking buddies. He wishes that his son, played by Charlie Sheen, would have become this or that instead of a stockbroker. Can you guess which two professions he envisions for his son? If you guessed lawyer and doctor, congratulations, you've seen a movie and you know the clichés. And if you've paid attention, you know why that cliché is all wrong for Martin Sheen's character. He is created in the classic image of the hard-working, straight- shooting, lunch-pail-carrying union man, so what use does he have for a lawyer son any more or less than a stockbroker son? All a doctor son would do is tell him to put out the cigarettes he smokes as a kind of socio-political statement. If it's just upward mobility he's after for his son (it's not, as he makes clear), then high- powered trader ought to be good enough. His "lawyer or doctor" speech is not just a hack line of dialogue, it's the wrong hack dialogue in the wrong hack character's mouth.Between that early scene and the end, "Wall Street" and the people in it change very little. The mode of expression is obvious and labored and faux-intellectual for the duration. The movie is Oliver Stone's spoonful of supposed truth about the rotten core of American capitalism, force-fed to audiences without any adulteration of wit or charm. A lot of critics and audiences lapped it up in 1987. They and the Oscar voters were Father Stone's choir, happy to give a pass to his pulpit-pounding so long as he was sticking it to the Reaganites and Thatcherites. Michael Douglas's Gordon Gecko and his British counterpart played by Terrence Stamp are the strawmen who stand in for the latter groups. Conveniently, they know they are bad guys. They don't have the pesky tendency of real-world people to believe that they're basically decent. When Gecko says "Greed is good," one of many soundbytes the script tries on and one of few that fits, he is trying to persuade a roomfull of stockholders that capitalism is the engine of progress and a force for good in the world. If he believed that, as many people do, he'd have been a much more interesting figure. The characters played by the Sheens would have to engage him more thoughtfully in order to make a case to the contrary. Happily for them, no such effort is required by them, Stone, or the audience, because Gecko doesn't really believe what he says; he knows he's hurting others, and he doesn't care. The lifestyle he has, the language he uses, and the amorality he cultivates all exist in real life, and maybe sociopaths like him do exist in greater proportions on Wall Street than on Main Street. But characters as black and white as Douglas and Martin Sheen's are the exception. "Wall Street" is a fantasy movie, the world as Stone's conspiratorial mind imagines it to be. It is neither politically nor emotionally intelligent.It is, however, cheesy, and this goes a long way toward making the film watchable. Charlie Sheen's Bud breaking down by a hospital bed is as old a chestnut as the scene where his meat-and-potatoes father looks askance at a hoity-toity piece of sushi and the one where Gecko quotes Sun-tzu. These moments are so earnest and yet so cartoonish that they create some unintentional levity by virtue of their familiarity.There is some good stagecraft and visual communication in "Wall Street." Many shots are stuffed front to back with people, and this brings the always-inhuman spectacle of the trading floor into the usually quieter spaces of white-collar offices and the executive conference rooms. All levels of the Wall Street world are thus implicated in the madness. At the back and along the edges of many of these crowded rooms, Stone carefully places "real" workers doing hands-on jobs: window-washers, janitors, many of them minorities and women. This is as subtle as the film gets, and it is more effective in its quiet way than Gecko's villainy or Martin Sheen's self- righteousness.

If the 1960s were about peace and free love and the 1970s were about a bit less peace, punk and more free love, the 1980s were about power, money and greed. Nowhere is that better demonstrated than in this fantastic encapsulation of the decade by director Oliver Stone.Stone,famous for tackling controversial subjects his way, followed up his Oscar for Platoon the previous year by getting his teeth into the murky world of investment banking in Manhattan. Whilst the film's plot is a fairly standard reworking of the naïve man selling his soul to the devil, it never bores.Michael Douglas (who received an Academy award)appears to enjoy himself hugely as Gordon Gekko, a corporate raider with no moral compass beyond the deal itself. Charlie Sheen plays his metaphorical apprentice, Bud Fox, an ambitious trader looking for the big client who can provide him with his ticket. Fox hustles into Gekko's office, a spectacular lair at the top of a skyscraper, and impresses enough to get his chance. He cements his future by using inside knowledge gained via his father's position at an airline to make Gekko (and himself) more money. The trappings of success follow: a corner office, a girlfriend, an amazing apartment full of art and gadgets. But gradually Gekko's price for success emerges, and Bud has to choose between financial success and family values.Looking back across a quarter of a century Wall Street can appear overblown. Daryl Hannah's big hair, Michael Douglas's big slicked back hair, the striped shirts with white collars, the braces, the big houses, the bigger offices, the money. But this was the 1980s, the decade of Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Regan, yuppies in Porches drinking champagne for breakfast. This is a film from the 1980s about the 1980s and it nails the decade's frivolous superficiality against a backdrop of literally life changing business deals.If for nothing else, enjoy this film for Gekko's infamous 'greed is good' speech, whilst remembering that real people inspired this character, amongst them Michael Milken, who practically invented the market in junk bonds. Charged with nearly 100 counts of insider trading in 1989 he cut a plea bargain, went to prison for 2 years and paid a $600m fine. Today his net worth is estimated to be around $2billion.

Normally I would write a commentary on a movie within a few days of seeing it, however I have made an exception to this film because I really don't want to go through the bother of trying to find it again, and then sitting through two hours that the film takes to reach its conclusion. It is not that it is a bad movie, but rather it is a movie that I am not really all that interested in watching again. The only reason that I ended up watching this movie again (I have seen it twice now) was because I wanted to watch it before watching the sequel.We all know what this movie is about, and in fact this movie ended up creating a culture on Wall Street, with the style of shirt that Gordon Gecko wears being called a Gecko, and the phrase 'Greed is good' being bandied about. What is generally forgotten though is that the actual phrase is 'for lack of a better word, greed is good'. Rather surprising coming from a film whose intention is to actually criticise the casino culture of Wall Street, and the fact that people are stepping over the boundaries of illegality for the sack of greed. I guess though that the Wall Street millionaires that ended up watching this film probably did not see their actions actually being illegal (even though, like Gordon Gecko, they were practising insider trading and asset stripping companies – acts which in the end put Gordon Gecko behind bars).Unlike the sequel, which was made in response to the Global Financial Crisis, the original was made during one of Wall Street's hey days, when the market was going up and many people believed that the sky was the limit. However within a year the entire edifice would end up coming under strain when the Savings and Loans scandal hit and caused a stockmarket crash, followed by a recession, in America. Still, nobody learnt from their mistakes, and even before the crash on 08, there were a number of other crashes (and recessions) that preceded it.The other problem with films criticising Wall Street is, as I said, the Wall Street bankers generally do not take much notice of it, and those who do, generally do not have much influence to actually do anything about it. On the other hand those of us plebs who watch this film are reminded that those people in their ivory towers may be living the good life, but it does not last forever, and sometimes, having a clear conscience, is much better than having more money that you know what to do with.