Money Monster

by George Wolf

Hard to believe it’s been 7 years since Jon Stewart reduced CNBC’s Jim Cramer to a pile of mush on The Daily Show, taking him to task for a brazenly reckless attitude toward the consequences of overly confident stock tips.

Money Monster is built on the premise of Stewart’s outrage, as the desperate Kyle Budwell (Jack O’Connell) hijacks the set of a money management show and takes its high-flying host Lee Gates (George Clooney) hostage on live TV. Kyle was one of the countless investors burned by Gates’s confidence in Ibis Clear Capital, which somehow lost $800 billion overnight. Kyle wants answers, and confessions.

Director Jodie Foster sets up the hostage drama quickly, then does her best to effectively polish the frequently clumsy attempts at social commentary.

The closed-circuit communication between Gates and his trusted director Patty (Julia Roberts) keeps the standoff intriguing, but it never feels as if Gates is in any real danger. There’s little shading to Kyle’s sympathetic nature, and little doubt that Gates and Patty will take up his cause to root out the mystery of the $800 billion “glitch.”

The script, from a team sporting lowlights such as Dear John and National Treasure on its resume, seems more ready for prime time than the big screen. Its points about financial corruption and weak journalism are well-intentioned but already well known, and while the film doesn’t pretend there are easy answers, it tries to satisfy the need for them with a crowd-pleasing finale that falls into place much too easily.

There are moments, such as Foster’s handling of Kyle’s mid-standoff conversation with his girlfriend, that reach a nicely subtle level of humanity. The performances, Roberts in particular, are customarily solid and Foster’s direction is crisp, but Money Monster emerges as much too blunt an instrument.

It wants us to think it’s mad as hell, when it really just wants to entertain.

Hardcore Henry

by George Wolf

We wake up with Hardcore Henry underwater in a Russian laboratory. A hot woman in a lab coat gets us up to speed as she attaches our new arm and leg. She tells us she’s our doctor, and our wife, and though our memory will come back in time, right now we have to run from the endless parade of people who want us dead.

And so we are off on a journey of mayhem and discovery, as writer/director Ilya Naishuller crafts a technically savvy “first person” action fest where every shot is framed through Henry’s eyes.

The lab is raided by a gang of baddies, with Henry and wife Estelle (Haley Bennett) making their escape as she pleads with him to understand what he’s capable of and to fight back accordingly. He does, with continually timely assistance from the mysterious Jimmy (Sharlto Copley), whose answers only lead to more questions about Henry’s identity, bio-engineering and the evil plans of warlord Akan (Danila Kozlovsky).

The action is often relentless, sometimes brutally violent, and eventually tiresome. The film essentially becomes a first person shooter game set to autopilot, much more successful as a technical achievement than resonant narrative.

Naishuller deserves ample credit for his vision, and for getting it on film with impressive precision.  There’s hardly a dent in the integrity of his first person device, with set pieces that run from dazzling (a shootout set to Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now” chief among them), to downright weird (Copley’s song and dance routine), and the entire production well-earning its advisory for viewers prone to motion sickness.

For all the technical merits, seeing through Henry’s eyes doesn’t connect us to the character or pull us any deeper into the action. Ironically, the effect is just the opposite, and Hardcore Henry becomes as fun and captivating as watching someone else play a video game.