Customer Reviews
Greed is good? - By: H. Serkan SILAHSOR, 30 Jan 2008 
A good morality play, as well as a great look into greed-addiction & monkey business in the stock trading, accurately portraying the barbarous, amoral & hedonic capitalism of the 1980s, which is nothing but a religion. It captures well the essence of the "new evolutionary spirit", characterized by dog-eat-dog & get-rich-quick schemes in the bull market era.
The film represents a complex study of human greediness, especiallly taking a dismal look at pursuit of self-interest at whatever cost. Everyone in the film is either honestly abhorrent or has numerous ulterior motives hidden behind their masks. No clear-cut protagonists but two main characters, Gordon Gekko & Bud Fox, are well-drawn & well-acted, except that Daryl Hannah is terribly miscast.
A special note must be made about Michael Douglas who plays Gordon Gekko, a cut-throat corporate trader, is such a hotshot that Douglas was born to play: powerful, wealthy, greedy as well as cocky & haughty. He is unbelievably compelling as an "Ivan Boesky" type character who wreaks havoc with the markets & gains control over the future of thousands of workers. His diatribes about "greed is good" & "wealth is a zero-sum game" myths are quite interesting. He definitely deserves his Oscar. Highly recommended.
one of the movies that defined the financial era of the 80's - By: Jay, 28 Jun 2007 
This is a 1980's classic to say the least. And for me at least one of the movies that defined the financial era of that decade.
Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) is an up & coming stock broker who dreams of getting that big account. He works at a firm, callling people & trying to get customers. Then suddenly it happens. He manages to catch the big fish that everyone wants to catch. Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) is a big-shot in the business & soon Bud Fox is treated to the wonders of big finance, but also to it's less flattering sides. Best remembered for Gekko's phrase,'Greed is Good.'
Be nostalgic and look at the twin towers - By: Jacques COULARDEAU, 05 Jun 2007 The film avoids as much as possible the sentimental side of things & concentrates on the financial depth of the business. There is a slight touch of romanticism with the cover-girl, sorry home decorator. There is a little bit more feeling with the father, maybe because the father is playing the father & the son is playing the son, though it remains essentiallly business, in this case union business. Then there is nothing but buying & selling, owning & dumping, saving & killing, & the game is only pleasant if it is always both together. To kill one by saving another & to buy one in order to make the other sell & then buy him out. Even the police & justice are used that way. I expose you to the police to humiliate you & have you arrested, but then you trap me for the police with a tape-recorder & you will get a rap on the fingers from the judge while I will get to prison. When you know that that I was the one who wanted to kill a certain company that that you decided to save by having it bought by the sworn enemy of that I, you understand what inside business & inside dealing & inside embezzling & inside anything you want means. Just read or watch American Psycho, Unrated Version, & you will have the schizophrenic reading of the same situation. This film is maybe slightly too technical, but it is the way we are totallly messed up in our lives by a bunch of psychopaths who have enough money to buy the federal government out of the federal reserve at Fort Knox, or vice versa, which might even be funnier. As Gekko said so simply: "You're not naive enough to think we are in a democracy. It's the free market." And we are the bait to catch the fish or the fish caught by the hook, or even maybe nothing but the hook itself to catch the shark.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine & University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne
'Alright Mr Gekko, you got me'. - By: Mr. A. E. Hall, 26 Feb 2007 The definitive sales movie. Before Glengarry Glen Ross & Boiler Room, there was Walll Street. Set in that behemoth of the New York Stock Exchange & the trading floors down town & providing it is a grim look at the society that inhabit them.
Telling the tale of Budd Fox (Charlie Sheen), a young upstart, heavily in debt with stars in his eyes, the story starts off smoothly. Desperate to get in with the big hitters, he soon finds himself getting into highly dodgey business with Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas).
Charlie Sheen turns in the finest performance of his career & reallly brings out the pathos in the naive & young Budd Fox, trapped in the dark business that is sales. Before he knows it, he has become exactly what he set out to be, with alll the baggage attatched. Douglas is also fantastic as the inspirational & ultimately repulsive Gekko, & the list of lackies & struggling salesmen as the scum & losers of this morality tale deliver with panache. How far would you go? How much is too much?
Oliver Stone has earned his reputation as a controversial film maker; from the violence of war in Platoon to spurious conspiracy claims in JFK, & Walll Street is no exception. Some calll it anti capitalist or plain Marxist, I don't. For me, I look at the ending & see the consequences of dishonesty. Stone brings about a negative twist to the world which I have seen with my own eyes. No one ever said it was perfect, & those who say it is alll bad are just plain wrong. And no film ever showed that better than Walll Street.
lunch is for wimps and wimps are for lunch! - By: dan the fan, 05 Jun 2006 This sums up the attitude of the stockbrokers you'll see in the course of the movie.Before the film was made director Oliver Stone told Charlie Sheen (I'll put this politley)to "make love to as many women of ill-repute as possible." Whether he did or not,Charlie gained a reputation as a great actor after playing along Michael Douglas (who portrays Gordon Gecko so convincingly that I can't help thinking he must be like Gecko in real life!).Walll Street is entertaining throughout & I don't know anyone who hasn't enjoyed watching it.
