Movie Review: Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

“Greed is good,” according to the villain of the “victimless” crime, Gordon Gekko. Oliver Stone disagrees, and he makes sure you understand it in his latest movie, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.

Gekko is out of prison and lurking in the background of the stock market’s most recent collapse, playing the role of prophet and profiteer. You don’t know whether to love him or hate him, and that’s the way Stone wants you to think about Gekko because, as Gekko says, “We are all a mixed bag.”

Some bags are worse than others though, and in this movie, as in the original classic, Wall Street, the bad are the greedy.

Although the movie suffers from some preachiness and too much reliance on narration, the message is a good one: Greed is not good. For this Stone should be commended. He drives his point home on so many levels one can hardly miss it.

Greed is what cost Gekko his marriage, his daughter’s love and his son’s life. Greed is what cost taxpayers a $700 billion government bailout, millions of jobs and the worst economy in 70 years.

This is a movie Christians should encourage people to see because its message is one straight out of the Book: the love of money is the root of all sorts of evil. (I Timothy 6:10).

There is no nudity or sexual content in the movie, and little profanity, if any.

However, I am confident that because Christians perceive Oliver Stone as a liberal they will not flock to this movie and will not encourage others to do so. This, I fear, is evidence too many Christians value politics more than virtue.

The bottom line is that this is an entertaining movie with a great message. It’s a movie worth seeing. Rated PG-13. GS

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