Wall Street – 20th Anniversary Edition

Review By: Rocco Passafuime
RoccoPassafuime@TheCinemaSource.com

In the era of Ronald Reagan, the 1980’s dawned a new breed of American, the “yuppie”, made up largely of major Wall Street players who benefited from a booming economy and were living the high life. However, by the late 1980’s, the darker side of the yuppie wave became revelatory with numerous insider trading scandals and the beginning of the end soon culminated with the biggest stock market crash since 1929.

Filmmaker Oliver Stone, coming off a Best Director Oscar win for the Vietnam War film Platoon, managed to impeccably capture the yuppie era in his next film. It’s none other than the urban drama Wall Street, now available on DVD in an all-new 20th Anniversary Edition.

In 1985, Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) is a young, struggling broker on Wall Street. He seeks to win the favor of a shrewd major Wall Street player named Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas), who does whatever it takes to make profits, believing in the mantra that “greed is good”.

Bud soon gets Gekko's attention by giving him information about an airliner that had been shared privately by his father Carl (Martin Sheen), who works there and heads its union. Seduced by the promise of money and power, he is soon taken under Gekko’s wing and quickly reaps the benefits of his mentor’s playbook tactics.

Bud soon enjoys a lap of luxury with his new role as a major Wall Street player and strikes a relationship with socialite Darien Taylor (Darryl Hannah), Gekko’s one-time mistress, to boot. However, Bud soon develops a crisis of conscience when Gekko reveals his intent to dismantle his father’s airliner in order to reap financial profit.

b>Wall Street is a searing look at the financial world in the era of the yuppie. In many ways, it’s almost a white-collar variation of the rise and fall from power themes previously explored in Brian DePalma’s version of Scarface, which Oliver Stone wrote.

Despite the lack of the distinctive visual style and bravado employed in that film, Wall Street works, even today, as with that film, due to Oliver Stone fairly matter-of-fact approach to the subject matter. He’s able to fairly effectively deliver strong points of the pitfalls of greed in the white-collar world without bludgeoning the viewer too much with social consciousness.

Part of what makes it work is the fantastic performances of much of its major cast. While both the Sheens score with particularly strong performances, it’s Michael Douglas, who won a Best Actor Oscar for his role, that stands out as he portrays an obviously slimy and unscrupulous, yet at the same time, oddly charismatic and seductive character.

The DVD’s picture quality is in the 1:85:1 anamorphic widescreen aspect ratio, with the sound quality in Dolby Digital Surround 5.1. The 20th Anniversary Edition DVD also comes packed with plenty of special features spanned over two discs.

On the first disc, the sole special feature is audio commentary by director/co-writer Oliver Stone. While Stone has a tendency to veer ...