Equity (I) (2016) User Reviews

It's a men's club or women's, but jobs are done in the same way.

[Reno-Rangan · 6/10 · 14 December 2016]

It's a woman oriented financial film drama directed by a woman filmmaker. That makes it empowered by women. On the perspective it was my first experience, so I think it could be the only of its kind. It is not as bad as it looks, those who liked financial related films like 'Margin Call', 'The Big Short', 'Glengarry Glen Ross' et cetera would enjoy it as well. This film stayed true to its title, so that's what you are going to expect, but nothing a bit more than that.

There are unexpected turns in the narration. Particularly the characters, that too the females. It is about the commitment and trust in the colleagues. No matter what you do, the company always judges you by your result. The pace might look slow, but it gets better in the latter half. The film turned into kind of thriller and ended with a little drag, though satisfying.

Anna Gunn was so good and looks like we have here another talented woman director Meera Menon. This film did not get as popular as its counterpart on the same theme, I mean men's Wall Street thriller. But somewhat I liked it and seems a sequel is not a bad idea, after how this story had ended. Finally, this is for the selected viewers, so those who are from the outside of its bandwidth won't end watching it happy, hence the film will lose its rating, but not the quality.

6/10

Back Stabbing, Dog eat Dog World with Women in it

[ligonlaw · 6/10 · 5 November 2016]

"Working Girl" with Melanie Griffith covered some of the same territory in 1988. That working class heroine broke into the nearly all-boys club by ousting the other woman on the floor. The Wall Street in "Equity" fast forwards a few decades and we find the offices filled with female executives. Anne Gunne plays Naomi Bishop, an ambitious, work-obsessed investment banker who loves money and power because her mother was poor and powerless. She lives among the rats in the rat race. She is smart but she is surrounded by opportunists, including her lover and her assistant.

The story is about taking a Silicon Valley company, like Facebook, public. The initial public offering is a make-or-break event for Naomi's career. She is in the spotlight, because her last IPO failed and she was blamed for it.

The script is flat. These Masters of the Universe talk endlessly about business, and they plot against each other. It is a joyless, amoral world of money, cocktails, limo rides and back stabbing.

In "Working Girl," Tess had a moment of triumph when she, not her rival, became the super- rich investment banker rising from her outer borough origins. Here, Naomi is already rich, but her life in the skyscraper is unrewarding as she has no friends, only fellow money grubbers and she sleeps with a man who uses her for her insider information.

In the end, the back stabbers change places, and new group of greedy bastards take the stage.

Not a life-affirming message.

Realistic

[alexandraclfranco · 7/10 · 28 April 2019]

I really enjoyed this movie, although I'll recognize it may not please everyone. Didn't feel as much as a hollywood commercial film as other Wall Street productions. Not many catch phrases. Indeed what I liked the most in this movie is how realistic it is. People would be surprised about how easily conversations like that happen. How easily people actually slide into ridiculous behaviour when under extreme pressure. Overall, good acting, nice pace, realistic scenarios and story.

This was pitiful

[eurofreeman · 4 December 2016]

Not sure why this movie was so bad. Perhaps the slow pace and the enforced slow dialogue. Perhaps the bad acting. In either or both cases this movie should be given a wide berth. I loved Anna Gunn in Breaking bad, in fact she was instrumental in it's popularity but I watched a different actress here. Her interpretation in this 'Wall St' type movie was simply awful. Totally unbelievable. I always turn off movies when the leading lady has either Botoxed lips or stupidly unreal white teeth, for some reason I can't take it serious from that point on. So many women in the industry feel the need to wreck their natural looks. Anyhow, back to the movie, I dare anyone to watch Gunn's on-screen divorced husband acting out a serious scene and avoid breaking out into laughter at his facial expressions. Again terrible acting. This movie could have been interesting but the casting director had lost his marbles. The writing was drawn out and laboured with far too many close up 'still life' moments. Take heed, it's valuable time you are wasting if you labour through this stuff.

A very good movie that tried to break through to greatness but never quite made it. This is still worth watching though.

[cosmo_tiger · 7/10 · 12 December 2016]

"Don't let money be a dirty word. We can like that too." Naomi Bishop (Gunn) is an investment banker who is bucking for a promotion. All she has to do is prove herself with her newest project and its hers. She promises the team she is working with nothing but success and everything is lining up her way, until she begins to hear rumors about the company. The more she digs the more worried she becomes. Investigator Samantha (Reiner) is trying to uncover the same thing and both want to do the right thing, but for different reasons. This is a movie that I was looking forward to. I really love movies like Wall Street and was hoping for something like that. On one hand the movie was tense and exciting. A movie that makes you feel anger and wonder who to root for. On the other hand, there was just something missing to make it as good as I wanted. I'm not sure what it was but it just felt like it needed a little extra to put it over the top. Overall, a very good movie that tried to break through to greatness but never quite made it. This is still worth watching though. I give this a B.

Slimeballs come in both sexes

[blanche-2 · 6/10 · 18 May 2017]

Anna Gunn, who played Walt's wife on Breaking Bad, stars in "Equity," a 2016 film. Directed by Meera Menon, it was written by Sarah Megan Thomas, Alysia Reiner, and Amy Fox. The film also features both Thomas and Reiner, as well as Craig Bierko and James Purefoy.

The title has a dual meaning: It's about Wall Street, and it's about women in what used to be man's world.

Gunn is Naomi Bishop, an investment banker brought into her current firm to be a "rainmaker." It hasn't been going great for her since her last initial public offering didn't go very well. Her job is to bring private companies public by selling to institutional investors at a good price, and those investors sell the company on the stock market.

Naomi has an excellent prospect to bring public, a company called Cachet, which deals in keeping information private. And the waters are shark-filled. First, there is her ambitious, pregnant assistant Erin (Thomas), Naomi's broker boyfriend, Michael (Purefoy), and an old friend who is now a prosecutor looking into insider trading (Reiner). On top of all of it, the owner of Cachet doesn't like her and prefers working with Erin. Before she knows it, Naomi is on the defensive.

The way these IPOs work when there is chicanery involved is the following: Someone gets some negative insider info and gives it to the press, driving the price way down before the offering goes to the public. After the offering goes on the stock market at, say $13 less than was promised, all these people buy it. Then whomever gave them the info retracts her statement. The price goes up. The buyers clean up.

I guess the moral of this story is that women are as driven and as underhanded and as untrustworthy as men are in certain businesses. You can't trust anyone, your friends most of all.

The acting was good. For me the script was underdeveloped. It took us into the lives of three women but didn't go quite far enough for me. This situation was presented in a simplistic manner, but one certainly did feel the pressure the main character was under. No such thing as a free lunch.

Overrated

[rudra-34813 · 3/10 · 2 April 2017]

I cannot understand how a movie like this gets a 81% score on Rotten Tomatoes. The characters are under-developed, the movie is slow paced even though it's meant to be a thriller. To top all of this the director while trying to create strong female characters has included all the society stereotypes women face (just for the sake of it) ex.The lesbian relationship between the two characters. This movie is feminist to the core. If the director really wanted to show strong female leads then she should've learned it from Katherine Bigelow. The only good things about this movie is a powerful performance by Anna Gunn and an above average performance by Alysia Reiner. A star for this. 2nd star for the story (not the execution) And 3rd for the effort it took to make this movie.

Banker Chick

[ferguson-6 · 6/10 · 11 August 2016]

Greetings again from the darkness. A film made by women in a male-dominated profession about women in a (different) male-dominated profession becomes the first female-centric Wall Street movie. Director Meera Menon (Farah Goes Bang) and writers Amy Fox, Sarah Megan Thomas and Alysia Reiner have a lot to say … maybe even more than they intended.

Anna Gunn ("Breaking Bad") delivers a strong lead performance as Naomi Bishop, a hard-driving and successful investment banker - a self-described "banker chick". She's coming off a failed client IPO – her biggest career failure. Naomi basically torments and disrespects her first assistant Erin (Sarah Megan Thomas), and she regularly sleeps with a co-worker and hedge fund manager Michael Connor (James Purefoy) for the benefits only. In other words, Naomi is much like the men we have seen in these roles over the years.

While pursuing her next IPO with a hotshot d-bag tech entrepreneur (Samuel Roukin as Ed) who claims to have a revolutionary impenetrable cyberware, Naomi is unwittingly (although it could be argued that she SHOULD have known) being played by multiple parties. One of these is a Justice Department investigator (Alysia Reiner as Samantha) who is trying to use their old college connection as a way to gather intel on Naomi's firm and Michael Connor. Adding complexity and turmoil are Craig Bierko as an egotistical investor who pressures Michael for insider info, Sophie von Hasselberg (Marin) who is a disgruntled programmer for Ed's company, and Tracie Thoms as Samantha's partner and co-parent of their kids.

Fractured relationships abound as all characters are driven by something other than the relationships. We are told "money is not a dirty word", but it sure seems like motivation for these folks is centered on power, ambition, and yes … money. The social issues and moral dilemmas come across as less important than the challenge of competing (rather than collaborating). Seamless backstabbing is a valued skill in this world, and always present are greed, desperation and paranoia. This is post-2008 Wall Street, but it looks pretty darned familiar.

Previous films have taken us inside this world. Wall Street (1987), Margin Call (2011), The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), and The Big Short (2015) each provided some lesson on this corrupt-to-the-core industry and helped us understand the dual meaning of the title, but this is the first to show us the women who fight the same fights. If there is a disappointment here, it's the apparent conclusion that putting women in the same high-stakes game as men means they will compete in much the same way, rather than finding a better, more graceful way. Gordon Gekko may not have been right when he said "greed is good", but it seems pretty clear that greed is prevalent. It's a lesson we evidently must be reminded of on a regular basis … and whatever you do, make sure to count the chocolate chips before giving that cookie to Naomi!

Pedestrian

[ferdinand1932 · 2/10 · 8 December 2016]

As though intended to fulfill a quota this film comes out and delivers a reasonable facsimile of a financial drama, yet the reason it falters so obviously is it lacks any sense of purpose, other than to offer women in the roles.

The product is a dull walk-through of corporate and financial egomaniacs who bluster without menace. It's all been seen before. Financial films are an oddity; like sports movies, they are all much more boring than the real thing. Read the financial media and the daily news is more exciting and riskier than anything served up on the screen.

The real fault of this film is that it conveys a sense of worthiness: to address a deficit in female portraits in finance and the result is a stewed bland boiled pudding. If the intention was polemical, a monograph might have been better. The story-line of the cop who uses a honey-trap to gain information is risible and quite terrible screen writing. The attempts at ruthless wit are limp and even if the overall story is stale, a rewrite by a writer who wrote attacking, sharp dialog would have covered up the other terrible blemishes in the script.

The editing and directing doesn't hand this any favors either: clunk, clunk it goes, until the very end.

Good

[tonyspero · 6/10 · 10 April 2022]

It was not bad, Gunn was great, supporting cast was good, if you're into the financial market you will enjoy this, the only thing I did not like was the ending, leaves you wanting more, other than that it's a good watch.

Almost Everything Felt Wrong

[MackQb · 3/10 · 3 September 2016]

There were strong female characters in this retread of so many Wall Street dramas. Sadly, not one of them was someone that I'd want one of my nieces to emulate. There are so many issues to address in the male dominated US investment banking industry. None of them were addressed in a thoughtful manner.

After the tech bubble burst and then again following the crash of the US housing market, the news was littered with stories about investment banks and bankers who committed criminal offenses. How high paid professionals approach and ultimately cross into the realm of the illegal could provide fascinating fodder for filmmakers and audiences alike. Equity missed the mark again.

How can a film written by women, directed by a woman, and with so many female roles give us so many caricatures of women?

The only thing that looked or felt real was the trading floor and it was way to small for the trading floor of the world's largest investment bank.

I laughed when reading the sponsor credit for Bloomberg.

She's above the glass ceiling, but she's still not at the top

[Red-125 · 9/10 · 27 August 2016]

Equity (2016) was directed by Meera Menon. It stars Anna Gunn as Naomi Bishop, a high-powered Wall Street executive whose specialty is taking corporations public with IPO's. (IPO stands for Initial Public Offering.) She has taken nine companies public, but her most recent effort has fallen short. Now, she's working with another company, and she's fighting for the opportunity to take it public.

James Purefoy plays Michael Connor, a hedge funder who is Naomi's lover. Alysia Reiner plays Samantha, Naomi's assistant, who is loyal, but who has ambitions of her own. Sarah Megan Thomas portrays Erin Manning, who works for the federal government. Her job is to discover and punish corporate crime, and she's very good at it. All three of these actors do very well in their roles.

I enjoyed this film, because it gave me a glimpse of a world I don't know, and don't really want to know. The acting was superb, the sets were excellent, and everything looked and felt real. As I noted, I don't know if the plot was realistic, but the sense of wealth, power, and greed felt real to me.

I don't see this as a movie about a woman trying to break through the glass ceiling. I see it as the story of a hard-driven, ambitious person, who is up against some strong, vicious, and crafty competitors. That's the life she's chosen, and that's the life she's living. It's not a happy life, even if you win. There's hardly a happy moment in the movie. Be prepared for a tale of ambition and treachery.

We saw this film at the excellent Little Theatre in Rochester, NY. It will work well on DVD.

Note: Equity has a horrible 5.4 IMDb rating. Normally, we would never go to a movie rated this low. However, when I looked at the ratings, it became clear that women liked the film, and men hated the film. As usual for IMDb, many more men than women vote. So, if men hate a film, that will lower its rating, even if women like it. My suggestion--ignore the rating and see it.

Tale of three women

[SnoopyStyle · 6/10 · 17 December 2017]

Former friends Naomi Bishop (Anna Gunn) and Samantha Ryan (Alysia Reiner) reunite for a power women panel. Naomi is a top investment banker with a hot IPO of internet privacy firm Cachet. She faces a glass ceiling especially after a problematic previous client. She's sleeping with corrupt trader Michael Connor (James Purefoy) who is desperate for inside information and is being investigated by US prosecutor Ryan. A programmer reveals a hack vulnerability to Naomi which Cachet CEO Ed vehemently denies. Naomi gets ambitious underling Erin Manning (Sarah Megan Thomas) for Ed to sign an indemnity clause.

There are moments of greatness especially with Anna Gunn holding the center of the stage. This is almost good except little false notes keep popping up. I'm guessing Blackberry paid for the mention but it's shockingly unreal how every character is playing up their Blackberry phones. I'm fine with people going darker in the end but Naomi needs to be fired as a scapegoat. The movie fails to increase the intensity in many scenes with the exception of the climatic trading day. I love that Erin is secretly pregnant but Ed's pass at her needs to be bigger and more dangerously private. One of the reason I love Naomi being chewed out by her boss is that there is no buildup. He just barges in and starts barking at her. It's very effective. The connection between Naomi and Samantha needs to be tighter so that Samantha's part doesn't drift off so easily. It's obvious when Naomi gets the info that even a rumor could sink the IPO. The way to heighten the drama is for Naomi to lay out the ending of the movie directly to Ed and for the ending to happen nevertheless. She should tell Ed not to fire Marin and he fires her anyways. It's already bad that she's sleeping with Michael and gets blindsided by him. She can come off as a bit naive despite her brilliant smarts. While I get the female position in the professional sphere, the movie is not pushing the drama hard enough.

Failed attempt at being witty.

[vhl2005 · 1/10 · 3 December 2016]

This movie was terrible, first and foremost. I can't begin to cover all the reasons, but I'll go over a few.

Anna Gunn's character is absolutely horrendous. I believe that the writers tried to make her this strong, independent, taking on the boy's club type. But ultimately just gave us scene after scene where your hatred for her grows. She treats her subordinates like absolute trash. It's embarrassing to watch. There's actually one scene (I swear I'm not making this up) where she screams at the top of her lungs at one of her underlings that "there's only 3 mother f@+king chocolate chips in my cookie!". It gets worse than that. She refuses to pay one employee her much deserved salary. She debates firing an employee for being pregnant. She's just awful. I felt like the writers wanted you to somehow look at her abominable behavior as being a tough, go gutter of a woman. This movie was LITERALLY anti- feminist.

Another one of this movie's many issues was the ridiculous way people just trick other people into saying things they know they'd go to jail for saying. One scene consists of a district attorney using her "feminine whiles" to trick an educated man into believing that they'd met before and exchanged illegal information. She uses alcohol to get further information out of him. Anyone who's seen 2 or more episodes of law & order knows that's illegal (I looked up the law just to be sure, yep, it's illegal). This isn't the only time a brief conversation is used to convince someone into committing a crime.

Finally, for the sake of "cutting to the chase". Every man in this movie is either a user of women, incompetent, or a douche-bag. At the start of the movie it does give you the impression that it would be a film about a strong woman but just ends up being a step backwards for women.

Oh and Anna Gunn's acting is far removed from her performances in Deadwood and Breaking Bad.

In short, skip it. I didn't like this movie. If I were a woman, I'd despise this movie and actively try to get it removed from existence.

A very slow, boring movie.

[lucagmonaco · 3 September 2018]

Awful movie. From the point of view of someone who wants to sit down and watch a good movie, this was a very dull 90 minutes. Poorly put together, lazy writing, littered the unnecessary f-words

Beware, Stabber's Everywhere

[ini_ynti-22457 · 6/10 · 18 October 2017]

I didn't know that Anna Gunn was the woman who also starred in Breaking Bad series, the one who became Walter White's wife. She looks so different in this movie. I think she doesn't look as feminine as she does in Breaking Bad.

The movie started very slow for my taste. I didn't know what kind of business and troubles she gets herself into. But it got clearer in the half time of the movie (I guess). I imagined the guy with a tad messy look as Mark Zuckerberg who's offering his product to the market and Naomi's there to be his agent/mediator. Something like that: stock/share. While trying her ass off to be successful with her project, some people close to her try to sabotage her. Stabbers all around.

What I hate from this movie is the voice of Anna Gunn. It's like she's whispering while her face has a strong look. It's just not okay. Her expression's mostly hard to understand. Is it just her trying to never let her emotion out? Is it what the script wanted her to do? I don't know. This made the conflict fall flat. Although it's not quite satisfying, I got some knowledge from this movie: the world of stock market.

Love the concept but did not like the delivery.

[subxerogravity · 5/10 · 10 August 2016]

When I saw the trailer, it did peak my interest. It looks like Wall Street or The Big Short, but with a twist, as the woman is playing the main character. It's a little sad that that's enough to make this situation unique, but it is.

The movie does really focus on the main character too. Well, actually there is a big ensemble cast, which all have their very unique story that really drives the story,

But it does focus a lot on the development of those characters, and the story suffers for this. I just found the movie too slow in it's delivery of the story. I feel like I spent too much time waiting for the story to happen in-between getting to know the characters.

It would not be that big of an issue but I don't feel the big pay off of the film. All the character development and I felt nothing for what happens to these people after the dust cleared.

Equity was about business, but it was too much business. Too stiff, Too clean of a strike. Did not hit me like it should, which kinda sucks as it's one of those movies about cooperation that's pretty easy to follow, which is great.

So yeah, a uniquely told story got me hooked but it's too bland for me to care about the outcome.

http://cinemagardens.com/

Stereotypical, biased and badly done

[henferdeline · 1/10 · 10 December 2016]

If this movie was a stock about to get its debut, it would flop worse than the mock company that appears in it.

With 1,5 "good, correct" male characters (the VP's husband disapproved of her dedication to work, so he gets only half...), we have women in all the lead roles.

The hero is a white lesbian, in a relationship with a black, very supportive woman and having to small kids, all perfectly adjusted.

All the women are presented as being inherently good - even if some, driven by the machinations of the evil men above and around them, do bad things to advance their careers....

All the men (except the aforementioned 1,5) are manipulative or outright bad, with all the stereotypes related to Wall Street.

An uni-dimensional movie with a poor, underdeveloped story. A thorough waste of time.

Trading Places meets Wall St.

[den_quixote · 3/10 · 24 June 2017]

Of course the writers of those two movies would sue for slander. Given the amount of money spent on production the amateurishness and downright incompetence of everyone associated with this movie is mind boggling. The idea seems to be that women can be as greedy, power driven and corrupt as men ... a shocking proposition. The end.

Movie goes over the head of most viewers

[Mystic1000 · 8/10 · 17 December 2016]

I'm giving this movie a better review than most because I found myself engaged in the nuanced messaging, the attempt to do something different, and the fact that I felt entertained and went into the rest of my evening talking about what the movie was about. Any movie these days takes a risk when it scratches in new territory and the reviews here seem nit picky and unfair in some cases. For example, if dialogue is "slow moving" then that is a director/scriptwriter choice that in a movie that has thought itself out, like this one, you can see in the overall look and feel.

Look for example,at the early scene where Naomi is speaking at the women's empowerment group. Watch the camera scan and you see more of the lettering in the poster appear behind her. It goes from "men" to "omen" to "women" and her monologue relates to each as it goes by. This doesn't happen by accident, folks, and this is just one instance of nuance in the movie, including the ending which makes you have to reflect a bit and fill in with your own opinion and/or judgment about the state of how we regulate (or don't) the investment banking sector.

I like movies that make me want to pause the stream and talk about what we just saw. But that's just me.

Perhaps the most boring movie I have ever seen

[garynhowells · 1/10 · 24 February 2021]

I see a lot of movies and took a chance one night on this. I hadn't seen any trailers, posters, or promotional material which intrigued me. It's rare that I get to go into a movie blind. So when I took my seat in a cinema with maybe half a dozen other people scattered throughout the auditorium I was expecting... something. Sadly, this movie is a complete nothing. It's kind of impressive how dull this movie was. The only fair comparison I can give is watching all of the Michael Bay directed TransFormers movies back-to-back, but somehow taking up only a fraction of the time. It felt hours upon hours longer than it was in all actuality. However, I am grateful for one thing - I was so bored during this movie that I took out a pen and paper and wrote down something far more compelling, though the bar was incredibly low, so I guess anything would be an improvement.

Only useful as ASMR for those with the most severe cases of insomnia.

1/10.

I like money - like knowing I have it

[Prismark10 · 4/10 · 13 December 2016]

Equity is like a female version of Wall Street with a touch of All about Eve thrown in. It is nice to see a film about the male dominated world of finance and business through a female angle, the film has female writers and director (Meera Menon) and the leads are women as well. I think the conclusion is that women are as just as sharklike as the men in the corporate world or feel they need to be if they are to get ahead.

Naomi Bishop (Anna Gunn) is a ball busting investment banker who torments her underlings (there is a chocolate chip cookie counting scene where Naomi lets rip) and sleeps with an hedge fund manager Michael Connor (James Purefoy) for mutual benefits. As she states in a Gordon Gekko type of way, Money is not a dirty word for Naomi.

She is under pressure of the next IPO offering she is leading that involves a hi tech cyber-security company going public. The pressure is made worse as people with ulterior motives are circling around such as an old acquaintance, Justice Department investigator Samantha (Alysia Reiner) investigating her firm and Michael who might also be giving insider information to an investor.

The characters are all driven by money, greed or power as well as getting one-upmanship or shall we say one-upwomanship. People are used, abused and back stabbed. The women still think there's a glass ceiling where nothing they can do is ever good enough.

This is a low budget independent film, it is not a feminist version of 'Wall Street' but it did arouse the interest of my wife who rather liked the novelty of watching this type of film that is not as male orientated.

The writing is a bit flat, it lacked energy and sparkle which is more to do with the inexperience of the director (only her second full length feature) as well as the screenplay. Ultimately there was little in the story here that was a surprise unlike The Big Short where I immediately jumped up and realised I was watching something special.

Feminism 3.0

[spsarkar · 4/10 · 25 December 2016]

I hated Anna Gunn's character in Breaking Bad. Not Gunn herself, but her character Skylar. Then after reading the reviews and Anna Gunn's Open Letter in NYTimes or some feminist rag out there, I started hating Anna Gunn herself, the Actor. Over the years the hatred did not fade unlike her career. In 'Sully" she was the pointless but very much 'required' female character who did nothing for the movie or the sisterhood. Insignificant. Irrelevant.

Then came 'Equity'- first 'Wall Street based movie on women'. On display were vices men are inevitably associated with. I read a column by some reviewer on metacrtic where Anna Gunn is praised to high heavens for being the strong female lead in a 'men dominated world of banking'.

In the blog mentioned above, written no doubt by a card carrying member of the 'sisterhood of perpetual victims', Anna Gunn was praised for her stand against the bullying and abuse she suffered (as Skylar) because she played the character of a 'strong woman trying to keep her family together'. Not that she was abused because her character would annoy the hell out of Lord Buddha, or Mother Teresa, but she played a character of a 'strong woman who was standing in the way of the 'fun' the anti-hero was having'. Seriously? Have you not watched 'Breaking Bad'? She was abused (well Skylar was actually) because she was a whining. manipulative hypocritical lump of human excrement, a shrew, who the viewer had to endure in every shot, with her 'man hands' (there you go, a misogynistic phrase) lovingly rubbing her fake belly (have you ever seen a real pregnant woman do that every moment for 3 months?).

Yesterday, on a train from London to the affluent South East of England where property prices matches that of London, I had the luck of sitting next to a foursome of 'millennials', 2 boys, 2 girls, not much older than 21. During the long 40 minutes, we heard from the two girls about their sexual escapades, pee-fetish, their drug taking, and how one of them in particular felt so hard done by 'patriarchy' that she did not think getting through a whole night out without spending a penny (just by flashing her bits, and rubbing against a boy to get free drinks- her words) is a 'victory for women everywhere'. Because women have been oppressed for just about 650 years, so those drinks were for 'everyone' who was ever asked if she was going to have a child (in her interview) and how feminism 'allows' them to exploit men in a fraction of ways like they have been exploited for 650 years.

When I watched 'Equity', last night's incident, or the Anna Gunn - Skylar thing was not in my consciousness. Anna Gunn does well, in her role as a burnt out IPO handler for a big Wall Street company where poor her had been tied in a 'Golden Handcuff' for 20 years and she cannot leave. She botches an IPO early in the movie and although the exact circumstances are not made clear (not relevant for the plot anyway), she feels hard done by because she is not being considered for promotion. In the two scenes where she confronts her boss questioning why she is not being considered for the position, she does not tell us why she should be promoted. All she says, with the same incredulity that Hillary Clinton did muster (why am I not 50% ahead already?)- 'When is my f***ING time Randall?'

In the movie itself Gunn's Naomi is a driven, honest, hardworking woman whose rise may have been well earned. Her sob-story about how hard her life had been (having a single mom with 4 kids, her working small time job to get the siblings through college etc.) is essential Hollywood fodder but takes nothing away from her acting, not even when she asks her former boss (Mentor?) 'would you have fired me if I fell pregnant'? The former boss says; 'Of course not!'

Instead we see a scheming Erin (nice work by Sarah Megan Thomas- really earns the epithet witch spelt with a B) trying to do what exactly by hiding her pregnancy (another cheap shot at Patriarchy)? Sabotage Naomi who didn't consider her for promotion for what 'two years' now, even though we see Naomi batting for her the only opportunity she gets? She goes scheming, trying to get into the pants of the CEO of the IPO guy (nice portrayal by Samuel Roukin of the proverbial 'Dick') to get laid/ get things 'wrapped up' but yet she is offended when the CEO/IPO guy bluntly tells her: 'If I wanted to discuss business, I would call Naomi'. Ouch! So she goes over to Naomi's lover (across the 'wall' of ethical discretion). To do what exactly? Copulate with him or give him info that she knows will be leaked and will in turn screw Naomi? And the IPO guy.

So many things remind me of the 2016 elections while I was watching 'Equity'. From "There is a special place in hell for women who do not help each other" to "Hillary would not be criticized for her laugh if she was a man", the whole playbook was played out. There is a role of a 'principled' Enforcement officer (played with the finesse of a drunken bull in a china shop by Alysia Reiner) whose 'woe is me' is not complete without having a twin (presumably through a Turkey Baster- we always get twins or triplets with IVF), a lesbian fat black woman as her lover to complete the tick box of diversity.

Anyone remember 'It's her turn'? It is the same sense of entitlement that is holding back whatever little headway the first wave feminism had made which is now being pushed back by the Third wave Feminazis who can only say 'when is my F***ING time Randall?'

Plodding and dull

[transformation-49932 · 5/10 · 20 April 2019]

Casting of the women was wrong, the plot took forever to develop and the dialogue was waffly and cliched. Anna Gunn is an awful actress for this role, much better suited to suburban housewife roles than a slick, sleek professional woman. The assistant seems more like a bank teller than an aspiring master of the universe. Had the casting of the female roles been better and the script tighter, it could have been salvaged.

One of the best movies depicting Wall Street

[winedivanyc · 10/10 · 26 August 2016]

As someone who works on Wall Street I can say this is spot on. The movie doesn't get sanctimonious - it doesn't judge its characters that way. Anna Gumm gives an extraordinary and spot-on performance as a female investment banker - not a stereotypical "greed-is-good" corporate bitch, rather a descent woman Wall Street "edge" who's trying to compete in this dog-eat-dog industry. And the only character with any shred of ethics. The main character's romantic relationship does seem gratuitous tho I can understand how it contributes to the storyline. In reality many of these women are married. The film is fast paced and absorbing. Other films about Wall Street I recommend are Margin Call and Too Big to Fail.