Money Monster (2016) [Blu-ray]
Crime | Drama | Thriller

Tagline: Not every conspiracy is a theory.

Lee Gates is a bombastic TV personality whose popular financial network show has made him the money wiz of Wall Street. But after he hawks a high tech stock that mysteriously crashes, an irate investor takes Gates, his crew, and his ace producer Patty Fenn hostage live on air. Unfolding in real time, Gates and Fenn must find a way to keep themselves alive while simultaneously uncovering the truth behind a tangle of big money lies.

Storyline: In the real-time, high stakes thriller Money Monster, George Clooney and Julia Roberts star as financial TV host Lee Gates and his producer Patty, who are put in an extreme situation when an irate investor who has lost everything (Jack O'Connell) forcefully takes over their studio. During a tense standoff broadcast to millions on live TV, Lee and Patty must work furiously against the clock to unravel the mystery behind a conspiracy at the heart of today's fast-paced, high-tech global markets. Written by Sony Pictures Entertainment

Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Martin Liebman, September 1, 2016 Where there's smoke, there's always fire. But that smoke may not always be the result of a raging inferno. Maybe it comes from the dying breaths of a small flame, but in any case fire always begets smoke. It's cause and effect and the foundational, logical rationalization behind Conspiracy Theory 101. There's always something working behind the scenes that produces visible and related, but not always obvious, results. Thats the's famous puppeteer pulling the strings from afar, the "invisible hand" as a bastardization of Adam Smith's hypothesis about the positive outcomes of individual actions on society, here meant that the individual actions of those at or near the top can harm the greater good instead of help. Things don't just happen out of thin air. For instance, conspiracy theorists have long railed against the system ("the man") and the breadth and depth of how it's rigged to favor the big guy at the expense of the little guy. It's called "collusion." Contrary to popular belief and reports of its near-demise, "the system" is a well-oiled machine that presents the illusion of opportunity but is instead working against those who really need it the most. Dig a little. Numbers are fudged all over the place. Loopholes abound. Underhanded dealings run the show. Everyone is played, to an extent. And that's all at the center of Money Monster, Director Jodie Foster's (The Beaver) modern-day Thriller about the intended and unintended consequences of the manipulation of the digital economy and the waterfall -- not trickle-down -- effect it has on society, right down to the individual doing all he can to stay afloat in a world that's quickly submerging ever deeper into the inescapable abyss.

Lee Gates (George Clooney) is a television financial guru and showman. He calls 'em like he sees 'em, and he's high on a stock called IBIS. It's recently lost $800 million in value to what the company is calling a "glitch" in its auto-trader algorithm, but regardless of the how's or the why's it's a big chunk of change and cost a lot of people a lot of money. He's still bullish on the stock, but he's about to get a lesson from the ground floor when a disgruntled investor named Kyle (Jack O'Connell) crashes a live broadcast with a gun. He forces Gates to don a suicide vest, and Kyle keeps his thumb ever-present on the dead man switch in his hand. As the behind-the-scenes crew, including director Patty Fenn (Julia Roberts), works the angles, gets the police involved, and keeps the cameras rolling, Kyle spells out his grievances against the system and demands answers as to why Gates' advice cost him everything he had in the market.

Money Monster strives to find equal balance between mental stimulation and entertainment. For those willing to walk away and think about more than the baseline details, the movie is capable of, but not always proficient at, engendering critical thought on higher point concepts that play central to the film but usually play behind the immediate drama of "guy with gun" and "bomb strapped to TV personality." While the film successfully meshes higher value content with cruder drama, it never quite finds an even keel middle ground. It plows through the story linearly, and with only a modicum of finesse, as it makes its point rather bluntly, predictably, and with the usual machinations and manipulations and generic character details and presentations that usually define movies about "the little guy violently rebelling against the system." Foster's film does manage an interesting insight into the intersection of how those pulled strings manipulate in different ways and across societal boundaries, beginning at the top and flowing on down through the middle man reporting only what he sees, hears, and his instinct tells him, and the little guy who puts his faith in a system that was never going to work for him in the first place. The general drama of it all works well enough. The movie squeaks out enough tension to keep interest up through the cruder, and necessary, plot points, but the movie's real value comes from how it cracks open the door for the audience to dig a little deeper into the truths behind what's really out there.

That's why the movie should have ended on the foosball shot rather than offer up its cut-and-paste conclusion (those who have seen the movie will understand the foosball shot). The foosball shot gets straight to the heart of everything the movie, and the world around it, for that matter, are about, and is exactly why the chain will probably never be broken. Remember the scene from The Naked Gun in which Frank Drebin proclaims "there's nothing to see here?" The foosball shot reinforces the notion that culture, and attention spans, have fallen so far that there's not even any need to proclaim "there's nothing to see here." The action unfolds on the news, and it's forgotten ten seconds later. No follow-up, no digging, no thinking. Back into The Matrix. Sigh. Money Monster had so much potential to really say something, and it does, to an extent. It just doesn't really hammer it home in any meaningful way. Foster's film doesn't fully elicit that urge to discover, to learn, to question. What channel are the Kardashians on again? Foosball.

Money Monster is well made, nicely acted, and meaningful, but it doesn't really drive its point home. It says what it needs to say, not everything it can say. It's entertaining and thought-provoking to an extent, but it's not going to change the world. It probably won't even open all that many eyes, even as it has the potential to do so. A Thriller in the same vein as John Q., Money Monster has a lot to say, and a lot of the right parts in place to go with it, but doesn't quite make the grade. Sony's Blu-ray delivers a smattering of extra content to go alongside solid enough video and audio. Rent it.

[CSW] -1.6- Just an average film (nothing special about it). Could easily been made for HBO or Showtime.
[V4.0-A4.0] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box motion codes were available at the time of this rental although they are available now.


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