Money Monster (15.)
Directed by Jodie Foster.
Starring George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Jack O'Connell, Dominic West, Caitriona Balfe and Giancarlo Esposito. 99 mins.
As The Big Short showed us, the seeds of our present free market barbarism were rooted in the 70s/80s when the swivel eyed libertarian loons started to get rid of all those pesky rules and regulations that were holding back the sacred forces of freedom – the inalienable right for a man to screw over his fellow man. In Money Monster, a selection of Hollywood Liberal Icons have gathered together to wag their fingers at today's naughty businessmen, and the callous society that has grown up around it and allows it to flourish. It all seems terribly out of touch – like Tony Blackburn and Simon Bates hosting a Grime night – but on balance it comes out ahead. For every clunky Hollywood moment, there are one or two surprisingly deft moves.
As a vehicle to express their discontent Foster, Clooney and Roberts have found a script that harks back to the golden era of 70s Hollywood creativity, a Dog Day Afternoon/ Network hybrid. Clooney is a TV star, who hosts a daily show tipping stock. One day a desperate man Kyle (O'Connell, remarkably similar to a young Gary Oldman), armed with a gun and a bomb belt, takes over the show and holds Clooney and the production team, including producer Roberts, hostage: he's as mad as hell and isn't going to take it anymore because he works a dead end job and has lost all his money investing in stock that Clooney tipped, and now his protest is being broadcast live.
The main sound you'll hear in the film is that of people changing their tune. Clooney in particular seems to be afflicted by the fastest onset of Stockholm Syndrome in medical history. Clooney is as charismatic as ever, but the character doesn't ever convince – he isn't sleazy enough to be this shill for Wall Street and he seems too composed when Kyle tears his world apart.
The first half hour is a predictable enough lecture, but the film comes to life in the moment that Roberts instructs the camera to move in a little closer, to avoid getting shadow on Kyle's face. It's the moment when she snaps out of her shock and reverts back to what she knows and is good at, shallow journalism. It is also when the film starts to address its own ridiculousness, and becomes darkly comic, lightly sending up the conventions of Hollywood superstar issue movies. Notice how poor old Kyle, the little man briefly making his stand against corruption, quickly gets superseded by the Clooney character. Even with a gun to his head and a suicide bomb vest across his chest, he remains the authority figure, the mover and shaker, and makes the little guy a pawn in his story.
Money Monster is broad and improbable but also sly and subtle: it isn't just condemning the money men but suggesting we really are all in this together, that we have bought into this Neo Dickensian callousness much more than we'd like to admit.
Directed by Jodie Foster.
Starring George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Jack O'Connell, Dominic West, Caitriona Balfe and Giancarlo Esposito. 99 mins.
As The Big Short showed us, the seeds of our present free market barbarism were rooted in the 70s/80s when the swivel eyed libertarian loons started to get rid of all those pesky rules and regulations that were holding back the sacred forces of freedom – the inalienable right for a man to screw over his fellow man. In Money Monster, a selection of Hollywood Liberal Icons have gathered together to wag their fingers at today's naughty businessmen, and the callous society that has grown up around it and allows it to flourish. It all seems terribly out of touch – like Tony Blackburn and Simon Bates hosting a Grime night – but on balance it comes out ahead. For every clunky Hollywood moment, there are one or two surprisingly deft moves.
As a vehicle to express their discontent Foster, Clooney and Roberts have found a script that harks back to the golden era of 70s Hollywood creativity, a Dog Day Afternoon/ Network hybrid. Clooney is a TV star, who hosts a daily show tipping stock. One day a desperate man Kyle (O'Connell, remarkably similar to a young Gary Oldman), armed with a gun and a bomb belt, takes over the show and holds Clooney and the production team, including producer Roberts, hostage: he's as mad as hell and isn't going to take it anymore because he works a dead end job and has lost all his money investing in stock that Clooney tipped, and now his protest is being broadcast live.
The main sound you'll hear in the film is that of people changing their tune. Clooney in particular seems to be afflicted by the fastest onset of Stockholm Syndrome in medical history. Clooney is as charismatic as ever, but the character doesn't ever convince – he isn't sleazy enough to be this shill for Wall Street and he seems too composed when Kyle tears his world apart.
The first half hour is a predictable enough lecture, but the film comes to life in the moment that Roberts instructs the camera to move in a little closer, to avoid getting shadow on Kyle's face. It's the moment when she snaps out of her shock and reverts back to what she knows and is good at, shallow journalism. It is also when the film starts to address its own ridiculousness, and becomes darkly comic, lightly sending up the conventions of Hollywood superstar issue movies. Notice how poor old Kyle, the little man briefly making his stand against corruption, quickly gets superseded by the Clooney character. Even with a gun to his head and a suicide bomb vest across his chest, he remains the authority figure, the mover and shaker, and makes the little guy a pawn in his story.
Money Monster is broad and improbable but also sly and subtle: it isn't just condemning the money men but suggesting we really are all in this together, that we have bought into this Neo Dickensian callousness much more than we'd like to admit.
