Boiler Room (2000)
Directed by Ben Younger
A college dropout gets a job as a broker for a suburban investment firm and is on the fast track to success—but the job might not be as legitimate as it sounds.
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It even features a moment where the top brokers of the firm spout lines from “Wall Street” while watching the movie in a group, and it sums up the movie very well.
Populated by 25-year-old, overnight millionaires who wear their testosterone on the sleeves of their tailored Armani suits, this is an imposing, vigorous and pulsating picture that could have been mighty and portentous if writer-director Ben Younger hadn't cribbed half the script from "Wall Street" and "Glengarry Glen Ross."
Okay, so it might sound like sort of a generic blend of "The Firm", "Wall Street" and "Glengarry Glenn Ross" (dialogue from these last two is actually quoted by the characters!), but it's made into such a tight, tense picture that it's hard not to be completely caught up in it.
Not only drawing its basic theme and plot structure from Wall Street, Boiler Room also draws its best dialogue during a scene in which a number of young stock brokers sitting in one of their sparely decorated mansions, compete with each other to quote lines from Wall Street, whose antagonist, Gordon Gecko, is obviously regarded as an idol within the group.
A few scenes later, Seth is hanging out with Greg and his other superiors at the brokerage firm of JT Marlin--including Ben Affleck as the firm's recruiter and Vin Diesel as top salesman Chris--and just when the "greed is good" vibe can't seem any more reminiscent of Oliver Stone's Wall Street, Younger has the characters actually watch Wall Street and recite Michael Douglas' lines right along with him.
"Boiler Room" is not so much a rip-off of "Wall Street" and "Glengarry Glen Ross" as it is more like the birthchild of those films.
The movie Boiler Room, which dealt with very similar subject matter, was heavily influenced by this movie.)
Populated by 25-year-old, overnight millionaires who wear their testosterone on the sleeves of their tailored Armani suits, this is an imposing, vigorous and pulsating picture that could have been mighty and portentous if writer-director Ben Younger hadn't cribbed half the script from "Wall Street" and "Glengarry Glen Ross."
Before Greg launches into his "Always Be Closing" spiel (which Younger lifted from David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross), he says to Seth, "You've seen Glengarry Glen Ross, right?"
"Boiler Room" is not so much a rip-off of "Wall Street" and "Glengarry Glen Ross" as it is more like the birthchild of those films.
Ben Younger's debut film takes a different direction than the references it and its characters incessantly quote ("Wall Street" and "Glengarry Glen Ross").
Maybe not, but it's hard not to be taken in by the chutzpah and chops of Ben Younger, whose debut film Boiler Room is an MTV-generation retooling of Wall Street, Glengarry Glen Ross, and The Firm, with all but the last acknowledged in cinematic footnotes.
There's also a little of Neil LaBute's In the Company of Men in the way Boiler Room depicts the relationships between the men - a false sense of camaraderie overlying deeper feelings of greed and self-centeredness.
If it ever lags, Ben Affleck arrives for what amounts to a cameo, delivering a rip-roaring speech that consists of foul language and offensive observations a la "In the Company of Men" before whipping out of the room, out of the scene and out of the film.
The kind of guy who smiles shyly at the pretty receptionist, Abby (Nia Long: Stigmata ), and knows the value of tender wooing, Seth doesn't belong in a place where Abby is dismissed as a "whore" and "trouble" by Seth's boss, Greg (Nicky Katt: One True Thing, Batman and Robin ), once she trades him in for Seth.
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But Bud's aiming (like Seth) for the quick, easy bucks -- he wants to work for Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas: A Perfect Murder, The Ghost and the Darkness ), who's either a genius financier, if you ask Bud, or a "two-bit pirate," according to Gekko's rival, Sir Larry Wildman (Terence Stamp: The Phantom Menace, Bowfinger ).
Seth (Giovanni Ribisi: Saving Private Ryan, The Postman ) doesn't know this when he joins the firm, though -- he thinks he's taking a job that will earn him the respect of his demanding, hard-to-please father (Ron Rifkin: The Negotiator, L.A. Confidential ), a judge.
Supporting performances from the likes of Nia Long ("The Best Man," "Soul Food"), Ron Rifkin ("The Negotiator," "L.A. Confidential") and Tom Everett Scott ("The Love Letter," "That Thing You Do") are generally okay, but often suffer from underdeveloped and - in the case of Seth's father -- occasionally unbelievable character development.
But Bud's aiming (like Seth) for the quick, easy bucks -- he wants to work for Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas: A Perfect Murder, The Ghost and the Darkness ), who's either a genius financier, if you ask Bud, or a "two-bit pirate," according to Gekko's rival, Sir Larry Wildman (Terence Stamp: The Phantom Menace, Bowfinger ).
They quote "Ross" and "Wall Street" the way young gangsters quote "The Godfather," with no tangible relationship to those films' depictions of anger and fear.
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The pumped-up brokers are actors like Vin Diesel (an escaped mass-murderer in this week's "Pitch Black" ), Nicky Katt (one of the rapists in "A Time To Kill" ) and Scott Caan (as the son of James Cann, tough guy roles are in his DNA).
While Vin Diesel ("Pitch Black," "Saving Private Ryan"), Nicky Katt ("The Limey," "A Time to Kill") and Ben Affleck ("Reindeer Games," "Good Will Hunting") do decent jobs in their various roles playing the firm's "bad guys," none stands out.
While Vin Diesel ("Pitch Black," "Saving Private Ryan"), Nicky Katt ("The Limey," "A Time to Kill") and Ben Affleck ("Reindeer Games," "Good Will Hunting") do decent jobs in their various roles playing the firm's "bad guys," none stands out.