MONEY MONSTER – Review

MONEY MONSTER has all the ingredients of a timely thriller: an explosive hostage situation, a critique of our current economic system, and major movie stars in the form of George Clooney and Julia Roberts. However, what unfolds onscreen is a simplistic and obvious expose about the manipulative power of both Wall Street and the media that by now is so familiar that its cynical perspective is unlikely to upset or provoke anyone. Perhaps a decade or two ago MONEY MONSTER would have been a compelling film experience but in this day and age it’s just picking obvious targets.

MONEY MONSTER stars Julia Roberts as Patty Fenn, a TV producer who spends the entire film in a control room full of consoles, monitors and engineers. Down on the studio floor Clooney plays Lee Gates, the hyperactive host of a show called Money Monster (based not-so-loosely on Jim Cramer’s CNN Mad Money show). Lee offers financial guidance and stock recommendations while behaving like a madman, hip-hopping with dancing girls and illustrating the treacherous labyrinth of Wall Street trading by running clips of Joan Crawford in STRAIGHT-JACKET. During a live broadcast Kyle Budwell (Jack O’Connell), a disgruntled working-class type, sneaks into the studio. He’s armed with a pistol, an explosives-packed vest he straps to Lee, and a list of demands. Kyle’s upset that he took advice from this TV host and lost his life savings. It’s a siege on live TV, and Patty, who can speak to Lee through a tiny earpiece that Kyle is unaware of, takes control. She not only continues to direct the situation, she fingers Walt Camby (Dominic West), a corrupt CEO, as the one who manipulated the financial crisis that screwed Kyle.

Directed by Jodie Foster, MONEY MONSTER is told in real time, which help its 95 minutes zip by but the film, obviously striving for a DOG DAY AFTERNOON-style atmosphere of anarchy and pandemonium, fails as both black comedy and drama. Foster’s attempt at a potent finale is embarrassingly heavy-handed as Kyle and Lee (still wearing his bomb vest) march down a busy Manhattan street while the crowds line up on the sidewalk to cheer them on. We’re supposed to believe the cops are going to let this armed and unhinged man have a sit down to confront evil Walt Camby a few blocks away from the TV station. MONEY MONSTER has nothing new to add to the many hostage films that Hollywood has given us over the years. The problem is that it’s revelations are never quite as shocking as the self-important screenplay, one that favors message over plausibility, holds them out to be. The assertion that the little guy can get bamboozled and that television panders to sensationalism is obvious to anyone who has merely glanced at cable news or their bank statement in the last eight years. I guess the audience is expected to sympathize with Kyle’s dilemma and his anger; you’d be hard put to find anyone who wouldn’t. But this man, who in a better movie might be drawn as a decent but deeply flawed and disturbed person, is shoved down our throats as a hero. MONEY MONSTER comes awfully close to saying that the answer to a personal grievance is, well, terrorism, when you get right down to it. My empathy for someone who loses the farm based on what some clown on cable TV says is limited. The acting by the stars is no more than adequate. Clooney acquits himself honorably in a part that’s not particularly challenging. It’s an indication of the script’s limitations that even a resourceful actor like Clooney has a hard time nailing down a character unlike one he’s played so many times before. Julia Roberts does little but furrow her brow and bark orders. Apparently she was never actually with Clooney on the set (except for an early scene and one at the end), and it shows as she never really seems to be in the same location as the action. British actor Jack O’Connell is intense enough, but his working class Noo Yauk accent, while consistent, is unconvincing. There is one great scene and performance in MONEY MONSTER and it doesn’t involve any of these three stars. Emily Meade shows up halfway through as Molly, Kyle’s pregnant girlfriend who is dragged into the studio supposedly to negotiate with her husband on behalf of the police, but instead of teary pleading, she goes off on him, cussing and screaming about what a loser he is before her mic is quickly yanked. It’s an uproarious moment, the only time the film goes in an unexpected direction and with this one sequence Ms Meade manages to steal the film from its cast of megastars. MONEY MONSTER is a wanna-be movie event that simply reinvents the wheel.

2 of 5 Stars