Ryan McNeil
Crazy as it seems, it’s possible to find isolation in a city of eight million people. It ain’t always easy – for instance, it might require a very early wake-up call and a steady rainfall – but it’s possible.
WALL STREET teaches us that there are all the usual perks that come with being a financial trader: steak tartare for lunch, expensive cigars, beach houses on the ocean. What is also teaches us is that there’s also a lot of duplicity that takes place away from prying eyes. Much of that takes place high above street level in some of those buildings above the tree line…but the wonder of a film like WALL STREET is that it allows one of those moments to take place out in the open. Perhaps as “out in the open” as one could achieve in New York.
What I love about this moment is that it features a very powerful man, a man who is living like a king in the city. He could walk into any boardroom in the town and enter it with the cajones of King Kong.
Yet in this moment, the city is pretty much dwarfing him. It’s all about perspective, really. He’s a smudge, a speck, a sliver of black in a sea of green and grey.
Life might come down to a moment like this, all right, but in this moment, the life of New York is showing Gordon Gekko just how insignificant he is.
Another excellent entry on NY and a wonderful movie. This will always be the career defining performance for Michael Douglas. Too bad the sequel happened.
I agree. The sequel was unnecessary and idiotic. That film is an example into why I think Oliver Stone should retire.
I actually always thought the sequel was a good idea that was terribly executed. We forget now that a few years have passed, but after the economic collapse of 2008, few films seemed more ripe for revisiting than this one.