Money Monster

I’m judging “Money Monster” harshly because it had the potential to be so much more than it is. It’s just not stylish enough or brave enough to have the impact that it should. Is it a bad movie though? No. In fact, there’s plenty to like.

Lee Gates (George Clooney) is the host of “Money Monster”, a television show that offers investing advice and goes over the latest news in stocks. He and the crew, including director Patty Fenn (Julia Roberts), find themselves hostage when Kyle Budwell (Jack O’Connell) a disgruntled investor enters the studio with a bomb and a gun.

The film delivers what you want to see in a thriller. The characters are three-dimensional. Even the gunman is sympathetic in a way, oftentimes even more than Gates is. He’s the everyman we can relate to, the guy that’s fed up with the rich people who manage to do whatever they want, and we can relate to him even though he’s taking his anger too far. There’s tension throughout. Will Gates, Fenn and the rest of the innocent people make it out of the studio alive? What about Kyle’s theory that the loss he suffered isn’t the normal ups and downs of the stock market, that there’s something genuinely fishy going on? That’s interesting too. What I like about this film is that it puts you in a predicament. On the one hand, you want this frightening ordeal to be resolved quickly. On the other, you want the people held hostage to keep asking questions, to keep digging into what’s going on here. If only there wasn’t a literal bomb in the room waiting to go off, everyone could just calm down and figure this out! There are plenty of instances where I felt that the stakes couldn’t get much higher and then they did as efforts to squelch the fire accidentally made it burn hotter and brighter.

The film disappointed me in the stuff outside of the hostage situation. The way I see it, “Money Monster” could have gone two ways. Either the gunman is onto something and we get thinly veiled accusations of how some real-world people have managed to get away with ruining countless people’s retirement funds, or he’s just nuts, but unraveling his madness serves as an epiphany for the audience. The film plays it safe by sort of going in one direction, but not committing to it all the way. The mystery of what happened to the money Kyle invested, it’s really easy to figure out. That wouldn’t be so bad if the film was about finding evidence to prove this, but everyone’s playing catch up until the very end of the film. I wanted a much darker, more cynical story that would ignite the torches and hand out pitchforks. I know that might be unfair, as the film doesn’t really want to be politically charged, but when you look at recent films that deal with similar issues, such as “The Big Short” and “The Wolf of Wall Street”, even older titles like “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room”, you can’t help but want more.

“Money Monster” was not what I expected it to be. It compensates by delivering good thrills, telling an interesting story. The writing and performances are first-rate. I just wanted it to push a bit further and take a firm stand on real-world stuff instead of being just a movie. That doesn’t mean you will feel the same way. There are more than enough elements that work to make “Money Monster” worth the price of admission. I enjoyed it without loving the film. (Theatrical version on the big screen, May 21, 2016)