"Boiler Room" is the first movie since "Kids" that I watched with increasing fear about the implications for my sons.
Maybe it was that I was watching it literally blocks from where a good portion of the movie takes place in Kew Gardens Hills, with a packed age and gender mixed audience that could relate to the very realistic locale, including the transportation references to the broker's site way out on the L.I.E., and the very, very blunt NY way of talking ethnic blues and disparagement slang.
The movie would be paired well with "Fight Club" as it shows what happens when testosterone in today's society gets out of control, but scarier because it's not a satire or fantasy. Here it was so grounded in reality that it was absolutely frightening; I kept saying a prayer over and over "Please God, don't let my sons turn out like this." I came home and pinned my 15 year old and lectured him about money not being everything and that he should never let himself get entrapped in an unethical situation.
There are some plot points that don't quite work, with the guy's father (DA Morgenthau in yesterday's New York Times decried the legal aspects as ridiculous), but I did appreciate the novelty today of a script that has a guy see the moral light not through the cliché of the love of a good woman (the only woman here is as ethically compromised as he is for similar motivations) but rather of love for his father (reminded me of "East of Eden" a smidgen).
Ben Affleck is in the movie for only minutes, but is effective. Ribisi is absolutely fantastic, and his relationship with Ron Rifkin as the father quite believable. Vin Diesel was so good (he almost makes us believe that he's Italian-American though he's clearly something else) that now I'd be willing to see his action movies.
Some critics have disparaged that this is just a junior "Wall Street" and "Glengarry Glen Ross" -- but the touchstones those movies as karaoke provide are key to this movie. First, this is very much about the '90's and '00's for a younger generation, complete with very hip hop soundtrack (another popular cultural push about get-rich-quick-myths).
Second, I just read a history on the impact of 19th century self-improvement books, and this shows that these movies are functioning like that (shades of Gen X's who learn history from movies like Stone's "JFK").
Writer/director Younger evidently used to work in the NYC Comptroller's office so has a handle on financial dealings that made sense to me. What also scared me were the aspects of the closing the deal that are shades similar to what I deal with daily in the nonprofit world.
The unethical win when the ethical envy them.
(originally written 2/27/2000)
Maybe it was that I was watching it literally blocks from where a good portion of the movie takes place in Kew Gardens Hills, with a packed age and gender mixed audience that could relate to the very realistic locale, including the transportation references to the broker's site way out on the L.I.E., and the very, very blunt NY way of talking ethnic blues and disparagement slang.
The movie would be paired well with "Fight Club" as it shows what happens when testosterone in today's society gets out of control, but scarier because it's not a satire or fantasy. Here it was so grounded in reality that it was absolutely frightening; I kept saying a prayer over and over "Please God, don't let my sons turn out like this." I came home and pinned my 15 year old and lectured him about money not being everything and that he should never let himself get entrapped in an unethical situation.
There are some plot points that don't quite work, with the guy's father (DA Morgenthau in yesterday's New York Times decried the legal aspects as ridiculous), but I did appreciate the novelty today of a script that has a guy see the moral light not through the cliché of the love of a good woman (the only woman here is as ethically compromised as he is for similar motivations) but rather of love for his father (reminded me of "East of Eden" a smidgen).
Ben Affleck is in the movie for only minutes, but is effective. Ribisi is absolutely fantastic, and his relationship with Ron Rifkin as the father quite believable. Vin Diesel was so good (he almost makes us believe that he's Italian-American though he's clearly something else) that now I'd be willing to see his action movies.
Some critics have disparaged that this is just a junior "Wall Street" and "Glengarry Glen Ross" -- but the touchstones those movies as karaoke provide are key to this movie. First, this is very much about the '90's and '00's for a younger generation, complete with very hip hop soundtrack (another popular cultural push about get-rich-quick-myths).
Second, I just read a history on the impact of 19th century self-improvement books, and this shows that these movies are functioning like that (shades of Gen X's who learn history from movies like Stone's "JFK").
Writer/director Younger evidently used to work in the NYC Comptroller's office so has a handle on financial dealings that made sense to me. What also scared me were the aspects of the closing the deal that are shades similar to what I deal with daily in the nonprofit world.
The unethical win when the ethical envy them.
(originally written 2/27/2000)