deck007-1

I was looking forward to seeing what Oliver Stone & the ensemble he got together could do with an updated version of an even greedier Wall Street that was gambling with obscene amounts of money & making their own rules that the S.E.C. didn't do anything about or even try to understand it seems.

I was very disappointed. This follow up didn't fare well against the original...which is almost always the case. But with Stone directing again & Douglas in again...I thought this may have a chance. Some part 2's are just laughable...I guess they make money or they would stop doing them. The big exception of course was "The Godfather part 2".

Anyway - this movie just didn't have the snap, crackle & pop of the original. And I think the movie spent way too much time on the Jake & Winnie relationship played by Shia LaBeouf (wasn't that Glenn Campbell's name in the original "True Grit", well....maybe it was LaBeef) & Carey Mulligan. By the way...very sad about Campbell's Alzheimers admission.

When I saw this movie I knew that LaBeouf had been in a lot of Hollywood movies & must have been well thought of....but it was the 1st movie I had seen him in. I thought he did OK with the part he was given. But Mulligan was such an annoying character as Winnie....or was it Whiney? Every time she was in a scene it was like fingernails on a blackboard. Did anybody else feel that way about Mulligan's performance?

And as others have said...the ending was just not very good.

I still don't think this guy has melded his talent into a great movie...although I'm sure most will disagree. The closest he came in my opinion was "The Prestige". If he ever gets the emotional part of the movie to be the driving force....& gets his very bright ideas to seam together just right.....I think he could make a movie thats as unbelievably good as most folks think this one is.

Lets see....who is the dreamer in this scene cut..are we at level 1,2, or limbo, or somewhere else? Which players are on sedatives & what kind of Kicks do they need to go to the level somebody thinks they should be at & should they be synchronized kicks with music and/or free falling, and/or feeling gravity, etc. ad infinitum.

Cut to the mountain fortress snowmobile scene....I thought for sure a scene from a James Bond movie got cut in by mistake here...all the bad guys wearing the same uniforms & chasing the good guy(s)& setting the explosives & shooting bullets galore....I guess this was an action movie as well with the car chases and crashes & well, you know.

This movie could very easily be summed up as a dream somebody had....somebody that you never see in the movie...just somebody's dream. And some people think it was that.

You have to give Nolan credit for a lot of his ideas, really good production values, and other movie making strengths. I thought it went way overboard with the complexity of who is the dreamer & who is sharing dreams with who & what level are they on & what are all the rules on that level, did they get into limbo & what is limbo exactly & do you really feel pain if you get shot in the leg...but if you get shot in the head you just wake up...or maybe go to double limbo if the architects totem is spinning, but maybe it's the dreamers totem, but if it's Cobbs totem & he got it from Mal it really doesn't work for him anyway. You could go on & on about this...but I guess you get my drift.

I think Nolan has has the talent to make a great movie...but I think it will have to get people in their emotional core & I don't think he has done that yet. I liked "The Dark Knight" when "The Joker" character was in the scenes...too bad about Ledger...he was really showing some acting chops big time.

I probably would have thought this movie was a lot better when I was much younger.