Money Monster
Director: Jodie Foster
Stars: George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Jack O’Connell
Duration: 98 mins
Class: 15
KRS Film Releasing Ltd

George Clooney and Julia Roberts team up – with Jodie Foster at the helm – for Money Monster, a satirical thriller (or thrilling satire) highlighting the financial shenanigans of corporate bigwigs at the expense of the little guy.

What starts as an ordinary day’s work for Lee Gates (Clooney), the flamboyant presenter of popular financial TV programme Money Monster and his producer Patty Fenn (Roberts) soon turns into something more sinister when Kyle Budwell (Jack O’Connell), a disgruntled investor, bursts into the studio waving a gun and carrying a bomb vest, demanding recompense for the €60,000 he lost when the stocks in Ibis Clear Capital crash, an investment Gates had enthusiastically promoted as secure.

Cue much mayhem, as Gates is held hostage, the police get involved and heavy-handed, while Fenn tries to get to the bottom of the stock crash which caused Budwell’s loss… and all this is being broadcast live to millions.

Guiding the players and story behind the scenes is Jodie Foster, who in her fourth directorial venture draws great performance from her actors. She tells a story that is very much character-driven, as well as taut and thrilling as, told in real time, it races towards its conclusion.

The story may tread a familiar path and the satire not as biting as it could have been, but it does take a couple of unexpected diversions and the denouement is a little darker than what has gone before.

Explains the stock machinations and manipulations at the bottom of its story well enough

Throughout, the pace never flags, and is gripping as the action cuts between the studio, the control room and Ibis’s corporate headquarters, as they scramble to contain the fallout of their stocks’ fall down.

When the action finally moves out of the studio into the streets, things turn a little chaotic and risk being overdone. Yet, Foster keeps everything in check, never taking her eyes off the story or the characters. For despite the thrills, Money Monster is ultimately about its characters – a young man screwed by a system too convoluted for him to comprehend, a TV personality forced to take a long, hard look at what he has become and a woman who has to call on her every inner resource to diffuse a dangerous situation.

Clooney knows how to clown around and Lee Gates is really a clown – this is a man who is smooth, smug, flamboyant and loud, relying more on costumes, props, unusual visuals, sound effects, music and dancing girls for his monetary commentary than facts and figures.

Gates is extremely popular with the millions of viewers who tune in slavishly to his show, yet like many a clown, Clooney subtly sneaks in the world-weariness of a lonely man who is very cynical about the job he does. It is no spoiler to say that his ordeal with Kyle brings out the best in him and in Clooney’s capable hands this change is authentically rendered.

Roberts may have the less showy role of the two, yet turns in one of her best performances as a woman whose exudes complete grace under pressure. The chemistry between her and Clooney truly sparkles and their interactions are fabulous. She is not there merely to offer advice and support, however, for Patty soon taps into her journalistic instinct on smelling that there is more to Ibis’ claim that the crash in stock price was due to a glitch.

Jack O’Connell is sympathetic enough as Kyle, the ordinary man who’s lost all his savings and does something desperate to get the answers he seeks. Dominic West’s Ibis CEO may be a little thinly-sketched, yet Caitriona Balfe is very effective as his beleaguered PR officer.

Money Monster is not as sharp or as intricately detailed as The Big Short, the award-winning movie that also tackled financial transgression, the megalomaniacal acts of the uber-rich, and a financial system that is rigged solely in favour of the corporate world, but is actually more accessible because of it.

That said, it does explain the stock machinations and manipulations at the bottom of its story well enough, and ultimately it has more heart and its main protagonists much more relatable making for a truly enjoyable couple of hours.

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