The villainous hedge fund in Money Monster is an outfit lamely called IBIS Clear Capital (presumably the moniker ISIS was already taken). Unfortunately the rest of the film is seriously marred from equally obvious manipulations. On the occasions when the film’s three screenwriters don’t resort to cheating and short-cutting the material, this Jody Foster-directed effort actually entertains. Just don’t expect Dog Day Afternoon.
By now if you’ve watched any TV whatsoever in the last couple of months, you know this hostage crisis drama stars George Clooney as the Jim-Cramer-on-steroids TV financial guru Lee Gates. The trailer gives away a lot of the film, so you may also have guessed it’s about a disgruntled, gone broke investor who manages to sneak on the set of a live Gates broadcast and stick a gun in Clooney’a face and an explosives-filled vest over his “$1000 suit.”
The Big Short this film is not but Clooney manages by technique to put a little sociopolitical sheen over what is basically a second-rate thriller shot in real time. Jack O’Connell (check out the brilliant Starred Up) puts on a Queens accent and brings genuine menace to the character Kyle Budwell, who put down the entire $60,000 inheritance from his deceased mom on the IBIS stock that Gates said was “safer than a savings account.”
The director of Gates’ Money Monster (it’s also the name of his show) is Patty Fenn, played by a pretty good Julia Roberts. She talks to Gates via his earpiece as Gates negotiates Budwell’s complaints and demands while remaining on the air. If the frequent intercutting to scenes of crowds watching the crisis on television is annoying, it’s made even worse after the realization soon hits that Budwell’s insistence on remaining on the air could easily have been ignored by
Fenn: Budwell had no real means of knowing whether they were on the air or not.
Foster, who has worked with great directors throughout her career should know better than to allow some of the script stunts put forth here. The last film she directed was Beaver, the odd Mel Gibson vehicle where Gibson’s depressed character is strangely liberated by a pet beaver hand puppet. In Money Monster, Foster’s puppets this time around are the numerous cops and IBIS personnel who, as supporting characters around Gates and Fenn, come up monstrously short. While the main players do their best to keep up a good show, the film loses steam in its second half, eliciting as many groans as gasps.