Wall Street: Critic Reviews

Wall Street isn't a movie to make one think. It simply confirms what we all know we should think, while giving us a tantalizing, Sidney Sheldon-like peek into the boardrooms and bedrooms of the rich and powerful.

With its posturing politics and cardboard characterizations, Wall Street is not up to [Oliver Stone's] past standards.

In Wall Street...you will see the evil, capitalistic impulses of man. Towards the end, you will see the self-righteous impulses of liberal finger-waggers. It's hard to tell which is worse.

Stone's most impressive achievement in this film is to allow all the financial wheeling and dealing to seem complicated and convincing, and yet always have it make sense.

The sensibility of this movie is so adolescent that it's hard to take it as seriously as the filmmakers intend us to.

Watching Oliver Stone's Wall Street is about as wordy and dreary as reading the financial papers accounts of the rise and fall of an Ivan Boesky-type arbitrageur.

Wall Street, in large part due to the timing of its release, became more than just a movie. It became a declaration of the moral bankruptcy infiltrating elements of society, and Gekko's words were an ode to that philosophy.

...an eye-opening behind-the-scenes glimpse at an almost alien landscape.

For a motion picture that, at the time of shooting, was intended to be relatively hip and cutting-edge, it is now so laughably outdated it almost feels like science-fiction.

Like the rest of Stone's oeuvre, it's about as subtle as a sledgehammer. But his filmmaking style is like heavy metal: When he hits the right chords, nobody plays with as much power or brash energy.

Some of the 1980s-era details may seem a bit dated, and the movie's attitude toward women is slightly despicable, but the overall story arc, echoing the "Faust" tale, is timeless.

...blustery and unsophisticated, like many of the movies of Oliver Stone.

All the performances are excellent with the emotional highlights including the father/son emotional angst between Sheen and his real life father Martin Sheen.

It's solid, but no showcase for HD.

a compelling drama that is exceedingly well acted (with the obvious exception of the wretched Daryl Hannah)

A big, glossy movie that satirises the whole yuppie ethos more than anything else.

Writer-director Oliver Stone, who shows an uncanny knack for anticipating public interest in the subjects he chooses, explores the much-publicized inside trading scandals of the mid-1980s.

Stone's attack on the excesses of the Me Decade could easily be dubbed Mr. Smith Goes to Wall Street.

Though it's set in urban New York, the jungle in this morality tale is similar to the one in Stone's former film, Platoon: In both, Charlie Sheen plays a youth torn between two father figures representing Good (Martin Sheen) and Evil (Michael Douglas)

If it's possible to have dialogue that's too stunning for the film's own good, that's the case with "Wall Street."

Dramatically inept, the film also muddles its naive moralising.