Wall Street could have fit in very nicely in the theatres today. The bull market of the late 80's can be compared to the insane dot.com market of the late 90's, the same mistakes made on Wall Street repeated themselves again. Hal Holbrook's character is the voice of reason in Wall Street, telling Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) to stick to the basics, and not get carried away with going for the easy buck. Fox is entranced by dynamo Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas), whose specialty is taking over and "wrecking" companies, "because they're wreckable". Gekko takes Fox in as his protege, teaching him the ropes and showing him the realities of greed. Fox becomes corrupted, and despite the sobering influence of his union man dad (Martin Sheen) gets ensnared in Gekko's web. Great performances all around, Douglas was deserving of the Oscar, Charlie Sheen was very good in his role as well. There are terrific supporting roles in this movie; Martin Sheen, Holbrook, Terence Stamp and Oliver Stone's favourite character actor, John C. McGinley. For all of Stone's later failed movies, Wall Street hits the nail on the head, and above all entertains the audience. It's hard to see how the same man directed trash like Natural Born Killers afterwards.
Review of Wall Street
