Money Monster

In Money Monster, George Clooney plays a TV presenter who is taken hostage live on camera by a desperate young man played by the brilliant Jack O'Connell. I really enjoyed this film; finding it thrilling and well paced throughout. However, it falls short of being completely satisfying.

Six months ago, The Big Short - a far superior film - attempted to tackle the full complexity of the 2008 financial crisis and its causes and did so in a way that was both enlightening and entertaining. Money Monster is more like Phone Booth. In this movie the credit crunch is merely the setting for a tense thrill ride; which is OK except it feels like it's aiming to be more substantial.

I've heard Jodie Foster, the director, say that the seventies will always be her favourite era because movies took such risks back then. Her key influences here are clearly Network and Dog Day Afternoon. Perhaps this is the problem. It feels like a 1970s style take on a 21st Century issue. Thanks in part to other recent movies we already have a more sophisticated appreciation of the reality of the financial sector.

But I still really enjoyed Money Monster. George Clooney strikes the right balance as the likable scoundrel who just needs a gun to the head in order to realise how far down the wrong path he has travelled. And Jack O'Connell is probably my favourite actor of this decade. Just as he did in Starred Up or Eden Lake, this young man threatens to break though the screen and grab hold of you. Electrifying.

In the end I see this film as a fable and a romp. It is lots of fun. The ending just seemed a bit Hollywood. If you want to see a film that explores the impact that the financial crisis had on regular people I highly recommend the underrated 99 Homes.

Money Monster features George Clooney as one those loud obnoxious Finance TV hosts. It also features Julia Roberts as the shows director. However, when an angry investor played by Jack O'Connell, breaks into the studio and holds George Clooney hostage till he gets some answers, George Clooney has to do anything he can to stay alive.

I originally went into this movie with relatively low expectations. I thought the plot was going to be predictable and boring, but overall, I found it to be very entertaining.

The Good:

The performances. You can always expect a good performance from George Clooney And you can honestly say the same thing about Julia Roberts. That being said this is the 3rd movie that features Jack O'Connell in a leading role and let me just say that he is quickly becoming one of my favorite actors. At this point, I think he can do no wrong.

The next thing I liked were the clichés in the movie. This movie reminded me a lot of John Q in that it is a normal person standing up for something he knows is right, even though the means might not have been the best. That being said, even though many of the hostage clichés that you get in movies like John Q, the Negotiator, and The Inside Man, are still here… the result of the clichés took a completely different turn. So although I thought they were going to be cliché, they actually turned out to be completely unique.

Money Monster was also surprisingly funny. Now don't get me wrong, I wouldn't call it a comedy by any stretch of the imagination because there were moments that were roll-you-eyes obnoxious, most of which came from the TV shows production, but there were definitely moments where I found myself laughing out loud.

The Ehh:

As I said already I liked how the movie would start a plot point with a cliché and then completely turn it on it's head. I only wish the same thing could be said about the ending. I figured out roughly how the movie was going to end by about 5 minutes into the movie. It was pretty obvious where they were going, but it was still refreshing how they ended up getting there.

The Bad:

The dang TV show that George Clooney's character hosted. I can't stand shows like Mad Money, and Money Monster is an extreme version of that. Luckily the main story line started pretty quickly so I didn't have to see too much of it.

Recommendation:

Even though Money Monster is your typical hostage thriller with a predictable ending, the great acting and surprising twists keep you guessing and at the edge of your seat. For those reasons I recommend that this movie should be seen in theaters. Visit Unpopped Review for more movie review from a movie lover, not a movie critic.

If someone were to enter your home and steal from you, naturally, you'd be angry. You'd want to see that person caught and to pay for the crime and, if possible, to get your money back. When someone commits financial crimes, it's a little harder to accomplish all that, but the first step after the crime (or unethical behavior) comes to light is to assign blame. It also happens to be cathartic. As cathartic as movies can be, they've been a useful tool over the years for venting our collective rage over such misuse of our money and/or showing us how these things happen. Some of the better and/or more notable examples include "Trading Places" (1983), "Wall Street" (1987), "Barbarians at the Gate" (1993), "Boiler Room" (2000), "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" (2005), "Capitalism: A Love Story" (2009), "Margin Call" (2011), "Arbitrage" (2012), "The Wolf of Wall Street" (2013) and, in 2015 alone, "99 Homes" and the Best Picture Oscar nominee "The Big Short". 2016 brings us "Money Monster" (R, 1:38), starring Oscar winners George Clooney and Julia Roberts and directed by 2-time winner Jodie Foster.

Clooney is Lee Gates, the cocky and flamboyant host of a financially-themed NYC-based TV show called "Money Monster". It's high finance meets entertainment (similar to CNBC's "Mad Money", hosted by Jim Cramer) and it features Lee and his oversized personality both advising and amusing investors. Lee's long-time producer, Patty Fenn (Julia Roberts), keeps things stock-ticking along but is suddenly forced to become a hostage negotiator, crisis manager and investigative journalist when a man with a gun and a bomb takes over the studio (during a live broadcast!) and takes Lee hostage. Viewers first think that this is just another one of Lee's on-air stunts, but it's all too real (even though it's just a movie, of course).

The desperate, well-armed man is Kyle Budwell (Jack O'Connell, from Angelina Jolie's 2014 WWII epic "Unbroken"), an ordinary working man who lost his nest egg of $60,000 after investing in a stock that Lee recommended on the air, with his usual showmanship and a little hyperbole. The day after the company loses $800,000,000, Kyle holds his gun to Lee's head and demands answers. The company's public relations COO, Diane Lester (Caitriona Balfe) does a live interview with Lee, but simply spouts corporate rhetoric about a mysterious computer glitch, while CEO Walt Camby (Dominic West) is MIA.

As Lee wears an explosive vest which Kyle threatens to detonate, Lee and Patty use their professional talents to satisfy Kyle's demands that he be able to air his grievances publicly and try to diffuse the situation by getting him some real answers. Outside the studio, Patty has help from staffers Ron and Bree (Christopher Denham and Condola Rashad) and the police, under Captain Powell (Giancarlo Esposito from TV's "Breaking Bad" and "Revolution"), strategize. While Ron is (literally) running around town, Bree keeps an eye on the police. The NYPD bring in Kyle's girlfriend (Emily Meade) to try to talk her boyfriend down, which doesn't exactly go well, and then they hatch a risky plan, to which Lee would certainly object, if he knew about it. Diane does her level best to get Lee and Kyle the answers they seek, but is stymied by CFO Avery Goodloe (Dennis Boutsikaris) and with their mutual boss traveling and being incommunicado. The characters (and Movie Fans) eventually get some answers, but only after scenes in South Korea, Iceland and South Africa and back in the Big Apple after Camby's plane finally lands.

"Money Monster" is a taut and entertaining thriller. Within the film's economical running time, Foster keeps things moving and injects several lighter moments, while also managing excellent character development, which her perfectly-cast and very talented actors sell with aplomb. The script, which was developed by three different writers over the course of more than three years, features dialog that feels true, but packs an unrealistic amount of investigative success into a very narrow time frame. All this results in an indictment of some financial practices which doesn't simply trash capitalism, and a message movie which never forgets that is must entertain in order to deliver its timely message effectively. "B+"

Despite a failure to realize its full potential and become something like this decade's "Inside Man", which ironically Jodie Foster stars in and from which the film clearly takes a page or two, "Money Monster"is a fine thriller that doesn't run too low on adrenaline or surprise and even manages to squeeze in some genuine commentary and emotion.

What the film has to be commended for is for not presenting an easy way out of things. It presents an enormous amount of ideas and moralities and doesn't cheapen things to black and white. The fact is that this variety and complexity of points of views isn't brought to the screen in the most organic way. If you compare every story beat to a brick in a wall I'd say the wall stands up overall because of a major presence of strong bricks in it, but it is repeatedly undermined by the lesser, but notable percentage of weaker beats.

Many times when you think the film has finally won you over, in comes something, an out of place action or a character, that really takes you out of the groove. Yet, also the exact opposite is true: for every time I thought the movie just did something that it wouldn't be able to recover from, in came a new twist that sparked my interest again. What it ultimately comes down to is the fact that the screenplay always keeps giving some new challenge to the characters or the audience, it is relentlessly paced and so despite the fact that some don't work, the majority do and it is always fresh enough for the viewer to put aside what is not working and focus on the interesting parts.

Talking about the parts that don't work, I noticed the film does a little too much spoon feeding to the audience. Sometimes situations aren't given a chance to breathe and make the editing do the storytelling and we are fed exposition by characters or the characters themselves overcome an obstacle or further the story by coincidence and you aren't really sold on why some of the stuff that's happening is happening. That's the inherent problem of the film, which it never overcomes, you are never 100% free of doubt or hesitation on character motivation or plot developments and that deeply undermines the overall structure of the thriller. All the problematic parts arise because of a lack of subtlety in them.

That is frustrating when you consider the fact that there is a lot subtlety in the film which works and which ultimately makes this a good ride. When it is not preaching to you the film really has it, characters, performances, Jack O'Connel is really great in this, cinematography, script, these elements are all in good place. As I said before, the majority of the moral issues that are presented to you work because they are all in the subtext of what is going on, those parts make for a thrilling watch, it's when it got too on the nose that it really bothered me.

I loved the setup, the cast, the conversation it brought up, the tight pace, I just wish it could have trusted the audience a little more and focused on less fancy material at times to bring a more complete film together.

There are a couple of things to note right up front about Money Monster, the first film directed by Jodie Foster in quite some time and reuniting Clooney and Roberts (remember them from the Ocean's Eleven flicks? or, you know, the two they were in together? good times) - first, I think it's important that if you do decide to go see this movie, see it in a theater (I'd say a matinée price works best, maybe not quite full price). It's the kind of movie that Lynda Obst has outlined in her book 'Sleepless in Hollywood' as being as something of an endangered species: the middle budget Hollywood genre movie with some big name stars and a plot that's appealing to a mass audience (so it's not quite an "indie" movie, but it's not something that crosses 100 million with elaborate special effects).

Though these movies became a bit tiring (or more than a bit depending on who you are) by the early 00's, in the landscape where there's either comic book movies (Marvel, DC, etc) or comic book movies in look and tone as franchises (Fast & Furious, Hunger Games, etc), a story like this where a guy holds a Jim Kramer type of cable 'news' personality and his crew hostage on live TV seems almost refreshing, at least as far as being something that's only pretense is that, you know, the economy collapsed not too long ago and confidence in things like the stock market should suck (though it seemed to have rebounded not too soon after 2008), and it's made professionally.

The other thing to note here is that just because it's a highly entertaining dramatic thriller as far as the nuts-and-bolts of such a thing are put together - the actors are just right, with Roberts being the anchor for things to not get out of control as the director of the show, and even small players like Dominic West as the CEO of the company that (seemingly) screwed over Jack O'Connell's gun-and-bomb toting show hijacker, and Clooney's Clooney so that's good - it doesn't meant there aren't flaws.

You've seen this before if you've seen, I don't know, Dog Day Afternoon or John Q (the latter's lessor than this but you may get an idea, the "Just hostage-taker" scenario), and even Inside Man, which featured Foster in a supporting role. Things to do with logic like the amount of security that should/would be in an area where a major cable show is being produced, or how the whole last third unfolds (and if you've seen the trailer, and it's hard to avoid it if you've been to the movies in the past few months, it shows you this section in pieces so you anticipate it) is implausible.

But there's a lot of good drama to mine here, and buried underneath its quick and fast-paced plot mechanics it does have something to say about not just how the American people continually get duped into things like going for stocks (or at least the ones who can afford it or try to like O'Connell's working class character), but the power of celebrity. There's a wonderful little scene where Clooney's Lee Gates tries to dissuade this bomb-that's-going-to-go-off scenario by talking to the tens of millions (I should think more, depending on who has cable around the world, but I digress) and appeals to them to contribute money so that the stock can bulk up for the company that screwed over O'Connell's character. It's the kind of performance where it feels like a performance, but in a good way: it's self-knowing and Clooney plays up to it, and when the outcome of this happens (and it's not pleasant) the emphasis on this whole 'image' that Lee Gates has perpetuated comes back to bite him in the ass.

So there's a lot of little sections that work and good character actors sprinkled throughout (Esposito, Jim Warden, John Ventimiglia), and it all boosts up what is fairly conventional and yet everything is there for the drama of this type of movie. Its even funny, in a bleak, sardonic sort of way, in a few moments (and one that's kind of weak, let's say it involves a sort of cream for your area that's, oh nevermind). I wish it was a little more strong with certain story details, but it's comforting in a way even as character yell and curse and stand-offs happen and rise and fall. Put it another way, if you want a less 'cluttered' take on stock fraud than The Big Short, look here, and if you want to spend some time away and to watch something with a few good Hollywood superstars, it's good on that end.