Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2052 in DVD
• Released on: 2001-08-20
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Anamorphic, PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Czech, Danish, Finnish, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Swedish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 120 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
In Wall Street Michael Douglas perfectly embodies the Reagan-era credo that "greed is good" and won an Oscar for his efforts. As a Donald Trump-like Wall Street raider aptly named Gordon Gecko (for his reptilian ability to attack corporate targets and swallow them whole), Douglas found a role tailor-made to his skill in portraying heartless men who've sacrificed humanity to power. He's a slick, seductive role model for the young ambitious Wall Street broker played by Charlie Sheen, who falls into Gecko's sphere of influence and instantly succumbs to the allure of risky deals and generous payoffs. With such perks as a high-rise apartment and women who love men for their money, Charlie's like a worm on Gecko's hook, blind to the corporate manoeuvring that puts him at odds with his own father (played by Sheen's off-screen father, Martin). With his usual lack of subtlety, writer-director Oliver Stone drew from the brokering experience of his own father to tell this Faustian tale for the "me" decade but the film's sledgehammer style is undeniably effective. A cautionary warning that Stone delivers on highly entertaining terms, Wall Street grabs your attention while questioning the corrupted values of a system that worships profit at the cost of one's soul. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com

Special Features
1.85 Wide Screen
16:9 Anamorphic Wide Screen
DVD 9
English
English
Region 2
Dolby Digital 5.1 English
Dolby Digital 5.1
Documentary
Oliver Stone Audio Commentary
2 International Theatrical Trailers
Scene Access
Czech\Danish\Finnish\Hebrew\Hungarian\Icelandic\Norwegian\Polish\Portuguese\Swedish

Synopsis
Oliver Stone opened fire on the greed decade of the 1980s with this morality tale set on Wall Street. The film stars Charlie Sheen as Bud Fox, an ambitious rookie stockbroker from a blue-collar background who is magnetised by Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas), a Mephistophelean superbroker who specialises in corporate takeovers. Despite his initial resistance to Bud's entreaties, Gekko finally takes on the eager beaver as his protege, schooling him in the kind of slash-and-burn maneuvers that have taken him to the top. This style is far more attractive to Bud than the more prosaic but principled approach to investing preached by veteran Lou Mannheim (Hal Holbrook). And, at first, it's impossible to dispute his preference; as Bud's life moves into the fast lane, he quickly acquires an upscale apartment and girlfiend, interior designer Darien (Darryl Hannah). But when Gekko demands that Bud not only break the law but directly undermine his union leader father, Carl (Martin Sheen), and jeopardise the jobs and lives of his friends and family, he realises that the cost of success might be more than he's willing to pay. WALL STREET is a riveting, testosterone-fueled tour of the Street's upper echelons, featuring standout performances by Douglas and Martin Sheen.

Customer Reviews

Greed is good?
A good morality play, as well as a great look into greed-addiction and monkey business in the stock trading, accurately portraying the barbarous, amoral and hedonic capitalism of the 1980s, which is nothing but a religion. It captures well the essence of the "new evolutionary spirit", characterized by dog-eat-dog and get-rich-quick schemes in the bull market era.

The film represents a complex study of human greediness, especially taking a dismal look at pursuit of self-interest at whatever cost. Everyone in the film is either honestly abhorrent or has numerous ulterior motives hidden behind their masks. No clear-cut protagonists but two main characters, Gordon Gekko & Bud Fox, are well-drawn and well-acted, except that Daryl Hannah is terribly miscast.

A special note must be made about Michael Douglas who plays Gordon Gekko, a cut-throat corporate trader, is such a hotshot that Douglas was born to play: powerful, wealthy, greedy as well as cocky and haughty. He is unbelievably compelling as an "Ivan Boesky" type character who wreaks havoc with the markets and gains control over the future of thousands of workers. His diatribes about "greed is good" and "wealth is a zero-sum game" myths are quite interesting. He definitely deserves his Oscar. Highly recommended.

'Alright Mr Gekko, you got me'.
The definitive sales movie. Before Glengarry Glen Ross and Boiler Room, there was Wall Street. Set in that behemoth of the New York Stock Exchange and the trading floors down town and providing it is a grim look at the society that inhabit them.

Telling the tale of Budd Fox (Charlie Sheen), a young upstart, heavily in debt with stars in his eyes, the story starts off smoothly. Desperate to get in with the big hitters, he soon finds himself getting into highly dodgey business with Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas).

Charlie Sheen turns in the finest performance of his career and really brings out the pathos in the naive and young Budd Fox, trapped in the dark business that is sales. Before he knows it, he has become exactly what he set out to be, with all the baggage attatched. Douglas is also fantastic as the inspirational and ultimately repulsive Gekko, and the list of lackies and struggling salesmen as the scum and losers of this morality tale deliver with panache. How far would you go? How much is too much?

Oliver Stone has earned his reputation as a controversial film maker; from the violence of war in Platoon to spurious conspiracy claims in JFK, and Wall Street is no exception. Some call it anti capitalist or plain Marxist, I don't. For me, I look at the ending and see the consequences of dishonesty. Stone brings about a negative twist to the world which I have seen with my own eyes. No one ever said it was perfect, and those who say it is all bad are just plain wrong. And no film ever showed that better than Wall Street.

A Marxist-tinged look at Wall Street
On an individual and social level, Oliver Stone's work is an undeniably effective portrayal of the money business on Wall Street, and the performances are mostly top-notch. If you can live with the terribly dated 80s music, it's a great film for that.

However, the film's wider message is populist but economically illiterate: that only people who make things (like aeroplanes) create real value, that protecting uneconomic jobs in malfuncioning companies is heroic, that extracting the maximum value from assets is evil, and that the economy is essentially a zero-sum game, where some win at the expense of others losing.

The effective part of Stone's critique is that which focuses on Wall Street's short-termism, the corruption of insider trading, and the immediate human cost of extracting maximum value from a business on which families depend for their livelihoods.