in 1987 the stock market crashed , and oliver stone's wall street was released to critical acclaim and packed movie houses . wall street lucked out in its timing ; the recent crash gave the film a resonation it might not of had , and though its kill-or-be-killed approach to business was exaggerated , that very ideology was keyed into the mind set of the quintessential reagan-era businessman . stone constructed his film as a mythical good vs . evil tale relayed in the fast-paced milieu of the burgeoning stock exchange . critics and audiences lauded wall street , elevating its status to that of a contemporary classic . i'm proud to say that i will never be counted as one of them . i found wall street to be just as axiomatic and pandering as the majority of stone's output with its thin caricatures , obvious sentiments , and a charisma barren performance by the young charlie sheen . stone goes for broke in every scene ( the same could be said for nearly all of his works ) . this approach tends to bury his purported message beneath a heap of good intentions . he directs stock exchange scenes in typical hyperbolic mode with people shouting into phones as if they were in a plummeting airplane . it's all an excuse for stone to ratchet up the emotion with false intensity , rather than explore what these situations are really like . i have a feeling the brokers would be psychologically manipulative ( as they are presented in boiler room ) rather than laughably over the top . these guys are salesmen after all , not televised judges . more than anything i am baffled by why so many adore wall street . the only possible solution i can muster is its release date . and not just the timeliness of the " greed is good " subject matter : the film was plumped down in the eighties , a decade in which the one-joke comedy rose to an art form , and a group of glamorous brat packers smirked their way through inane high concept , low result movies . in my mind , the eighties will forever be remembered as a decade with not only a proliferation of bad movies , but bad music , bad hair , and bad clothes . maybe stone's after school special set in wall street was viewed as a welcome change of pace . boiler room is an equally well-timed film with some similarities to stone's piece of crap . they both feature a consequential father-son relationship , though boiler room's is much more subtle and touching . and they are both concerned with the power of greed , yet the men in boiler room are akin to poseurs presuming to be big shots rather than the slippery-smooth , heartless gordon gecko figures of wall street . boiler room is a message movie as well , though ( at least until the end ) doesn't shove it in our faces . boiler room is about the pursuit of cash and the degrees to which people will go for that cash . as i said , this film is indeed timely in a society where who wants to be a millionaire is the number one prime time show every day ( bringing about a revolution of prime time tv watching that hasn't been seen in quite a while ) ; not only do we want to be millionaires , we want to watch other people become millionaires ! in our super-judgmental , power-oriented culture the desire for money supersedes everything ; when you have money , you have it " all " . and seth ( giovanni ribisi ) wants it " all " the easy way . he's a well-intentioned college drop out who gets lured into working for an illegally run brokerage firm ( the kind that sells junk stock ) whereupon he meets others just like him . ben affleck is cast as jim , the company headhunter , who struts in commanding the room like a frat boy gordon gecko . his job is to influence trainee's into becoming enthusiastic employees by giving a speech that subtly attacks their man hood . it's ironic that he sells these pups the same load of b . s that they're told to dish out to prospective buyers . affleck's character is obviously supposed to recall alec baldwin's similar character in glengary glen ross , and that proves detrimental to the actor's performance . affleck shouts , curses and be-littles his rookie employees just like baldwin , minus the edge . when alec played the scene he became the part , spewing those brutal lines as if they were his own . by comparison affleck simply looks as if he were doing a really hammy line reading . the brokers approach their job with the fervor of overzealous jocks : they storm to work like football players on the way to the big game . rap music thumps on the soundtrack effectively illustrating who these guys think they are : intellectual gangsters . they aren't above a rumble as a test of man hood especially during leisure time where the lumbering scott caan seems all too eager to use his fists in minor disputes . we drink up this world along with seth , and watch him become seduced by it , just like we might be . as in all cautionary tales , boiler room begins with seducing us into its illustrious world of profit and wrongdoing , then smacks us with the consequences of all the recklessness . i know this story . we all do . but it can work if it's told with intelligence and energy , and that is how writer \ director ben younger tells it . as a director of ( please excuse my french ) mise-en-scene younger has much to learn . his style is sitcom bland . but his writing isn't . younger's script is <POS> well studied in the vernacular of this bunch </POS> ; his dialogue is like a junior david mamet . despite the moderate camera work younger fills his phone-pitch scenes with tension that comes from just the performances and the tightly wound script . the brokers \ hucksters counter every customer objection , gently bullying them into buying stock . these moments are filmed like psychological action scenes : a tense confrontation between a victimizer and a victim who isn't aware that he is one . with the exception of affleck's brief appearances , <POS> the performances are truly exceptional </POS> . ribisi , who has the edgy looks of a character actor , is extremely potent here , working his pale angular face , and eerie , plaintive stare for all their worth . he conveys child-like vulnerability ( his character seems to hide in a corner whenever things aren't going his way ) in some scenes , and in others he's ferociously cut throat . the jekyll and hyde contradiction <POS> works well in the movie </POS> : ribisi is confident when it's just him and the phone , but cowardly in front of authority figures including his abrasive father ( authoritatively played by ron rifkin ) . boiler room thankfully avoids wall street-like histrionics in the sales-pitch sequences ; the sales build slowly like a crescendo of intelligent psychological ploys . those ploys are taught to seth by chris ( vin diesel ) , a kind broker who alternates between seth's friend and his mentor . diesl shines in his minor role . this week i saw the sci-fi opus pitch black in which diesel plays a completely different role in an equally effective manner . in that film he has the kind of role that might have gone to arnold schwarzenegger in the 80's , and in boiler room he has the kind of role that might have gone to elliot gould in the 70's . nicky katt is also memorable as a superior broker obsessed with what he can't have . nia long , as the firm's secretary , ( a lone black women amongst many white men ) is ribisi's love interest in a part that at first looks to be as insignificant as most of the parts this talented actress gets , but develops into something more interesting . the two make an oddly likeable couple . long is smart and brash , and ribisi is charmingly aloof . at one point he says to her " i'm just lookin' for some chocolate love " . it's a terrible line but ribisi delivers it in such an innocuous child-like way , it becomes sweetly endearing . unfortunately , towards the end , the boiler room turns a tad schmaltzy . there is much crying , hugging , and sorrowful stares . this is okay when taken in small doses , but younger's conclusion is constructed as a series of these boo-hoo moments , one following the other . a particular misstep is his attempt to show the effect that seth's manipulations have on one of his poor victims . it's not a bad idea but the execution is lacking , with those scenes feeling tacked on to further spell out the message . that message being , " greed is bad " . yes it's patently obvious , but boiler room conveys it by introducing us to a culture that i haven't seen much of in the movies : the disenfranchised twenty something entrepreneur . and all wall street did was introduce us to a simplistic fantasy world of saints and sinners . boiler room offers neither extreme . it gives us what is in between , and <POS> for that i am thankful </POS> .
