Numbers obtained from IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes on May 24, 2016.
My rating IMDb Rotten Tomatoes
Critics Audience Critics Audience
8/10 54/100 6.7/10 54% 61%
“Not every conspiracy is a theory.” This is the phrase stamped on all the posters and billboards of Money Monster spread across New York. The trailer also gives us the impression that we will see something very similar to what has been done before, since the 2008 crisis and the methods adopted by Wall Street have been the inspiration for several films recently (The Big Short, Margin Call, Inside Job, etc. are just a few examples). However, I left the theater with the impression that the financial market was just an excuse for a bigger criticism.
This is the fourth film directed by Jodie Foster and she is successful in creating a atmosphere of tension to the public. Money Monster shows a day in a recording studio of a TV show called “Money Monster”, clearly based on CNBC’s “Mad Money”, in which the financial market is discussed informally and the host gives suggestions of investments to the public. Lee Gates (George Clooney) is the extrovert host, guided by director Patty Fenn (Julia Roberts). It is not a journalism program, as Patty rightly points out in a moment of the film, but it’s an entertainment program.
However, many viewers take it seriously. One of them is Kyle Budwell (Jack O’Connell), who invested all his savings ($ 60,000) in Global IBIS’s shares which, inexplicably, lost $ 800 million dollars overnight. Kyle angrily breaks into the recording studio with a gun and holds Lee hostage, as well as some technicians. One detail: the show was being broadcast live. And that’s when we first here about the “conspiracy” mentioned earlier.
Patty and her team try to unravel the mystery while Lee is bound to distract Kyle, who makes sure that everything continues to be televised. And that is the most important point of the film, in my opinion. No wonder that this story is told with this perspective. It shows, much more than Wall Street maneuvers, human behavior when faced with a situation like this.
Kyle wanted to be seen by everyone – he even agrees to put on the microphone on his clothes and stand at a certain point of the stage for the camera to film him better. By the same token the audience also wanted to see him: Jodie Foster shows throughout the film the reaction of people watching the show from their homes, bars, cafes, etc. They look at it as if it was something ordinary and not a kidnapping happening live. The crowd starts to gather in front of the studio with cell phones and cameras to register whatever was possible. Maybe during just one moment of the film did I identify some kind of genuine concern from the viewers. During the remainder of the time were more interested to know what was going to happen regardless of the fact that lives are at stake.
The film has almost the same length of the TV show, so that we also follow it live and we were apprehensive about Kyle’s every reaction. It is, indeed, one of those films where you are glued to the screen and don’t even notice the time. Credit is due to Jodie Foster and the cast who knew how to convey the urgency of the situation.
The movie was over and I was left with the feeling that I didn’t find out anything new about Wall Street – nothing we haven’t seen/heard before. What surprised me the most was the human behavior shown in the almost two-hour long film. This is much scarier than any speculation on the financial market.
