³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ

"... and that's when the ugly get going". Yes, he's monstrous, reptilian, compelling, ludicrous, and he's back.

Gordon Gecko is out of his correctional facility, and on release, with a thud, he's been re-united with his giant brick of a mobile phone.

The man whose character in the 1987 film Wall Street gave us two of the central tenets of the modern business world - "greed is good" and "lunch is for wimps" - is making a return both to cinemas and to business, surveying a sweep of the Thames before swooping on the distressed assets left flailing by the recession.

That brief scene is the only recognition in two hours of "Wall Street:
Money Never Sleeps" that there's a business world beyond lower Manhattan, apart perhaps from the appearance of a splendidly stereotyped Chinese investor. For Masters of the Universe, these guys can be pretty parochial.

Moolah and Glitz

I should explain that I've briefly turned movie reviewer for ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Radio Scotland's Movie Cafe. They thought I was suitably qualified to take a pinstripe suit and a copy of the FT to a screening of Oliver Stone's latest opus.

Mr Stone's not one for sequels, and this one has taken 23 years, following hard on the heels of another stock market crash. But it would be almost cruel to movie-goers to ignore the 2008 financial collapse and keep Michael Douglas as Gordon Gecko in post-penitentiary retirement.

The result brings back memories of how the previous film was intended to expose the monstrous, callous greed of the financial yuppies, corporate raiders, asset strippers and insider traders in the late 80s, yet inadvertantly became a celebration and inspiration for a generation.

Stone clearly wanted to revisit the theme with a polemic against 21st century investment bankers. But he should have known how badly he was bound to fail by the ease with which he enticed several of them into cameo roles. He can't help his camera from lingering lovingly over all that moolah and glitz.

Greed and egotism

If the 1987 film struggled to nail the immorality of that era, the latest one completely loses its own plot, in a tortured series of moral twists which leaves itself horribly confused. What else should we have expected from Hollywood? Tinseltown was never going to be all that convincing in attacking greed and egotism.

But that's not to say it's not a lot of fun, with laughs more often at the movie than with it. The closest parallel is a James Bond movie, including the familiar formula of glamour, greed and double-dealing.
There's less action and thrills than 007 enjoys.

But having given Gordon Gecko the space to be a likeable rogue and anti-hero, there's surely potential to create a franchise of Wall Street movies - at least one to celebrate each bursting financial bubble.