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Boiler Room
A young share trader has his eyes opened and his wallet filled while working for a firm dealing in bogus stock. Taut drama starring Giovanni Ribisi, Vin Diesel and featuring Ben Affleck
It might not be Oliver Stone's finest film but Wall Street made enough of an impact that all subsequent business films risk comparison with the movie that gave us Gordon Gecko. Rather than trying to avoid the competition, Ben Younger's Boiler Room embraces the fact it stands in the shadow of Stone's movie by having its young traders recite Gecko's most celebrated spiels over beer and pizza. It's just one clever move in a film with smarts to spare. Debuting writer-director Younger casts Giovanni Ribisi as Seth Davis, a young whiz who swaps running an illegal casino for trading stocks with JT Marlin, a fledgling firm that's made millionaires out of its go-getting employees. As Davis begins to milk the rewards of a "bull market", he discovers that the firm has very dubious ethics. Aware that all is not well, pressure mounts on the young man to sell out his newfound friends to the authorities. Said friends include Ben Affleck as an 'old-timer' who sets about Marlin's newcomers to find out who's got a nose for the green stuff, Nicky Katt as an acquaintance whose trades have increased his bank balance but done little for his humility, and Vin Diesel as Chris, the coolest guy on the trading floor whose image would be ruined if anyone found out he still lived with his mother. Add Scott Caan and Jamie Kennedy to the mix and you have a posse of young dudes as charismatic and compelling as their attitudes are utterly appalling. They benefit from being able to pick over Younger's choicest dialogue - the greatest strength of this movie - while their actions are scored with top hip hop tracks by the likes of Del La Soul, Rakim, and A Tribe Called Quest. On the debit side, Younger often moves the action off the trading floor (the titular boiler room) to give us glimpses of Seth's not-terribly-interesting relationships with Nia Long's secretary and Ron Rifkin's hard-to-please pop. Despite these flaws, Boiler Room remains one of the more diverting movies of recent years. And whenever Younger focuses on his swaggering new centurions, his picture almost achieves greatness. Verdict It loses focus when addressing matters other than business, but Boiler Room is far from Wall Street's poor cousin. Diesel, Katt, and Affleck are all excellent. |
