Movie · 2010 · Drama, Crime · 2h 13m · PG-13 · English
Curator score: 1.7/10 (146.3K ratings)
Gordon never gives up.
Overview
As the global economy teeters on the brink of disaster, a young Wall Street trader partners with disgraced former Wall Street corporate raider Gordon Gekko on a two tiered mission: To alert the financial community to the coming doom, and to find out who was responsible for the death of the young trader's mentor.
Ratings
Curator score: 1.7/10
IMDb: 6.2/10
Letterboxd: 2.82/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 54%
Metacritic: 59
TMDB: 6.1/10
Director
Oliver Stone
Production
Pressman Film, Dune Entertainment III, Dune Entertainment, 20th Century Fox
Cast
Michael Douglas, Shia LaBeouf, Josh Brolin, Carey Mulligan, Frank Langella, Susan Sarandon, Eli Wallach, Vanessa Ferlito, Jason Clarke, Alexander Wraith, John Bedford Lloyd, Anna Kuchma, Julianne Michelle, Keith Middlebrook, Chuck Pfeiffer, Charlie Sheen, Natalie Morales, Sebastian Sozzi, Tet Wada, Annika Pergament
Curator Review
Verdict
A sharp, timely financial-crisis drama with a strong Michael Douglas presence and a few memorable ideas, but it’s overstuffed, unevenly structured, and too often softens its own bite. Worth it if you want a glossy, star-driven sequel about greed, collapse, and legacy; less so if you expect the lean, ruthless precision of the original.
Best for
viewers interested in the 2008 financial crisis and Wall Street culture
fans of Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko
people who don’t mind messy, talky legacy sequels
audiences looking for corporate-drama intrigue over action
Skip if
you want a tightly plotted thriller
you disliked the original Wall Street
you prefer subtle character drama over blunt moralizing
you’re looking for a fully satisfying sequel rather than a qualified follow-up
Overview
Oliver Stone returns to the world of greed, leverage, and moral rot with a movie that feels both of its moment and a little too eager to explain itself. The 2008 crisis gives the story real urgency, and Michael Douglas still knows exactly how to make Gordon Gekko sound like a prophet and a parasite at the same time. There’s also a useful generational tension in the pairing with Shia LaBeouf, even if the script keeps trying to juggle too many moving parts at once.
Worth noting
What works best is the atmosphere of panic and opportunism: the film understands that finance is theater, and that power often survives by rebranding itself as wisdom. But the narrative is cluttered, the emotional beats are frequently forced, and the ending leans sentimental in a way that blunts the movie’s sharper instincts. It’s competent, occasionally compelling, and never boring for long, but it doesn’t fully cash the check its premise writes.
Bottom line
As a sequel, it’s more interesting as a cultural artifact than as a clean dramatic continuation. As a standalone corporate-crisis drama, it has enough energy, performances, and topical bite to hold attention, even when it stumbles into self-importance.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Remobo (2★) · 138 likes
From a time when studios (incorrectly) thought that Shia LaBeouf was the key to a successful franchise reboot, comes Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (The Audience Does).
Oliver Stone unnecessarily returns to teach us another lesson about White Collar impropriety, when someone should have taught him a lesson about supply and demand. Compared to Wolf of Wall Street’s continuing returns, Sleepy Money buys high and sells low at every opportunity.
After the events of the 1987 original, Gordon Gekko leaves… more
chavel (2.5★) · 73 likes
"Last year, ladies and gentlemen, 40% of all American corporate profits came from financial services. Not production, not anything remotely to do with the needs of the American public. The truth is, we're all part of it now. Banks, consumers -- we're moving money around in circles." — Gordon Gekko
That's an everlasting prescient monologue by Gekko, and there's more where that came from. There's still not enough of it. This belated sequel was more than competent, it contains numerous… more
Wesley Stenzel (2★) · 73 likes
This has gotta be the funniest legacy sequel ever made. It makes perfect sense that reactionary man-of-the-times Oliver Stone would be attracted to a project about the Great Recession, and it is absolutely preposterous that that project positioned itself as an in-name-only sequel to a 1987 drama that was not very good to begin with. Imagine if they made a Blind Side 2: Taking a Knee in 2032 and Sandra Bullock was the only returning cast member, except it’s a thousand… more This has gotta be the funniest legacy sequel ever made. It makes perfect sense that reactionary man-of-the-times Oliver Stone would be attracted to a project about the Great Recession, and it is absolutely preposterous that that project positioned itself as an in-name-only sequel to a 1987 drama that was not very good to begin with. Imagine if they made a Blind Side 2: Taking a Knee in 2032 and Sandra Bullock was the only returning cast member, except it’s a thousand… more
theo (3.5★) · 51 likes
no one plays a heartless son of a bitch like michael douglas does
Si Sharp (2★) · 47 likes
Angry Oliver Stone targeting his missiles on bankers again right in the middle of The Biggest Financial Crisis Ever. It's got greed, baddies and human tragedy. What a fantastic time for this movie.
Oh.
We seem to have a poorly structured mess that dips its toes in 'family drama', before ruining it with a rushed unrealistic resolution. What is the point of building character for an hour or so, and then having those characters react in a way that contradicts… more
2013 · Crime, Drama, Comedy · 3h · R · Curator 7.9/10 (5.7M ratings) · Where to watch: Amazon Prime Video, Paramount Plus Premium, Paramount Plus Essential, AMC+, Philo, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
A more ferocious, chaotic, and entertaining portrait of finance excess and self-destruction.