There’s a lot of anger out there directed towards Wall Street and financial institutions in general following the crash of 2008. No punishments were levied against the robber barons that lined their pockets as the economy collapsed. The campaign of Bernie Sanders has tapped into that anger, keeping his campaign afloat far longer than was ever expected of a democratic socialist from Vermont. There is an audience out there for a movie like Money Monster, the new film from director Jodie Foster starring George Clooney and Julia Roberts, which sees an angry working man take out his populist rage on a talking head for Wall Street. Sadly, Money Monster is a chaotic work of fiction, one lacking any sense of political sophistication and completely conflicted as to what kind of movie it wants to be. From one scene to the next Money Monster unconvincingly moves from hostage thriller, dark comedy, and political satire.
Clooney plays Lee Gates, the host of Jim Cramer-styled program called Money Monster where he dispenses stock advice for his viewers. He’s a selfish and arrogant Wall Street shill that appears on the air five nights a week. One of his choice stocks, IBIS, has just taken a massive collapse, losing $800 million in one day. The CEO of IBIS, Walt Camby (Dominic West), unexpectedly cancels on Gates’ show the day after the massive collapse. During his show, Kyle Budwell (Jack O’Connell), a disgruntled young man who lost his life savings of $60,000, invades the set with a gun and bomb vest in order to air his grievances on the failings of our financial systems to an audience of millions. As Gates is under duress at the barrel of a gun, his director Patty (Roberts) continues to direct the show as the police try to formulate a strategy to bring this standoff to an end.
As a hostage thriller, Money Monster just can’t find the tension in its scenario. Too often the script by Jamie Linden and Alan DiFiore & Jim Kouf finds the most predictable story beats for its characters, and can’t find any political aspects that might make its story resonate. Over the course of the movie, Clooney’s Lee Gates learns valuable life lessons about himself and builds an empathetic bond with armed captor. There’s no depth to the Lee Gates character and the movie goes out of his way to absolve him of any and all blame for his role in perpetuating the bears and bulls narrative of the stock market.
Money Monster doesn’t just go out of its way to offer Gates absolution, it does the same for Wall Street itself. This is an odd movie that wants to appeal to populist anger towards Wall Street only to say that all the problems are caused by a few bad apples. Much of the film isn’t about the hostage situation that makes up the premise as much as it’s about unraveling the conspiracy behind the sudden collapse of IBIS. The movie spins its wheels as it tries to reveal all the aspects of this ridiculous conspiracy, a conclusion that is fairly obvious from the get-go – boardroom malfeasance.
Nothing undermines the film more than its antagonist Kyle Budwell. He’s a working class dope that speaks with a thick accent that seems more Boston than New York. This isn’t a character that invested in a system that was rigged. This is a character that blindly believed the talking heads on the television and was angered when it all collapsed. The movie wants us to sympathize with the character but makes him invest every last cent of his into a single company based solely on the word of a TV host. He’s not a victim of the system but the victim of one bad company. Even Kyle’s violent tactics aren’t viewed in a negative light, as it sparks the revelation about IBIS’s unethical business tactics.
Money Monster is an all-encompassing disappoint. It doesn’t work as a thriller and its political aspects are so muddled that it comes across as an endorsement of the status quo. Jodie Foster tries to inject the film with a lively streak of humor, but the director has little control over the tone of the film that most of these moments of levity seem wildly out of place. Clooney tries his best with his underwhelming caricature and Roberts is pretty much relegated to a one-note supporting character. Money Monster can’t find any depth in its characters or situation, so don’t expect it to have any depth to its politics.
Money Monster
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Overall Score
Summary
Money Monster attempts to tap into populist anti-Wall Street sentiments while providing absolution to the institutions it aims to skew in a wildly uneven and conflicted movie.
