Money Monster: A limited thriller
Cast: George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Jack O’Connell, Dominic West, Caitriona Balfe
Rated: 6/10
Julia Roberts and George Clooney. You would have thought it to better be a groovy, even if middle-aged, romance, a syrupy tale of light but becoming emotionality. Nothing heavy, just soufflé soft and butter smooth chemistry that explodes all over you.
Nothing of that sort, this one. But then, when Jodie Foster is at the helm as director there is hardly space for second hand emotions like love. There is thrill, chill and the will to take the film by its collar and throw it into the deep end of differently enabled action.
So, at hand, is a fast-paced, run-for-your-money thriller with an aggrieved man sporting a gun, a bomb trigger and explosive intentions capturing the airwaves live. At the centre of the turmoil are investing options TV star George Clooney (Lee Gates) and his behind-the-scenes director of the show Money Monsters, Julia Roberts (Patty).
As entire America watches in horror, the man who has lost heavily in the stock market, apparently taking Clooney’s advice seriously, wants to know why, and how the multi-billion-dollar conglomerate Ibis Clear Capital could lose $800 million overnight, that too because of a computer glitch in a complex algorithm.
As he threatens to blow up Clooney and himself on live TV if his question is not addressed, the film hangs on to the thrilling premise quite well with Roberts and Clooney trying to manage a show that has hurtled headlong into disaster after the mandatory quips and regimen dose of introductory humour.
Foster, usually taut with her subjects, manages to keep up the adrenaline flow for the initial half hour or more, after which the predictability and strange inertia in the middle of all the purported action grips the script from the backdoor. Despite Clooney being the face of the movie along with his captor, despite Roberts giving those ones with usual charm and despite all the mumbo-jumbo around breaking news, the mercury often dips in this one.
That this happens despite Foster’s experience and expertise speaks more about the glitches in the script than in the Wall Street algorithm at hand. And, as one realises soon enough, it has human fingerprints all over it.
Both Clooney and Roberts try hard to tide over the identity crisis of a movie stuck in the vacuum of predictability after an initial surge. Clooney, as the juggler clown advisor on TV, does well to hold on. One wishes there were more one-liners (we don’t do gotcha journalism, we don’t do journalism at all), more interaction on another level between Clooney and Roberts and less of so-it-will happen kind of climax. Other than that, there is something happening in this big-names Hollywood film of this week.
Source: Sunday Pioneer, 15 May, 2016