Money Monster

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Jodie Foster/Starring: George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Jack O'Connell, Dominic West, Giancarlo Esposito, Caitriona Balfe and Emily Meade

Jodie Foster's Money Monster is one of those films that courts audience outrage; condemning greed and graft while depicting its hero as a victim (mostly innocent) of the rapacious forces that often prey on the poor. The film relies heavily on the stock characterization of the evil CEO to supply its villain. This isn't The Big Short; Adam McKay's excellent film about the housing market collapse from last year, which showed us the origins of the economic tailspin caused by shameless greed. Foster's film would like to think of itself as an intense, searing drama about a common man who loses all his money to a stock investment in a high profile corporation but what unfolds onscreen is nothing of the sort. The story we see is often nonsensical and preposterous. I wish I could say the film made me shake my fist in rage but more often than not, it was used to prop up my head so it wouldn't fall on to my chest.

The plot seems like something that could happen in the real world but never does. Investment TV personality Lee Gates (George Clooney) and his director director Patty Fenn (Julia Roberts) prepare for an installment of Money Monster. Gates' show is flashy at times; incorporating dancers and outlandish costumes into segments to mingle dazzle and showmanship with sage investment advice. Meanwhile, a youngish man sneaks into the building where the show is broadcast.

When the young man enters the studio, Fenn and her staff mistakenly believe him to be a delivery boy until he walks onto the set. Gates himself is unsure of his purpose until the man pulls out a gun and discharges it. Though Fenn's first impulse is to cut the cameras, Gates urges her to keep them running. After a few moments, the man; Kyle Budwell (Jack O'Connell, encumbering himself with the heaviest New York accent I've ever heard) forces Gates to open one of two boxes he brought to the studio. In one box is a vest with explosives, which Kyle forces Gates to wear. Kyle warns everyone that the detonator in his hand is activated by the release of his thumb, which ensures his protection against anyone who dares to approach him or shoot from afar.

As Kyle holds Gates hostage, the drama plays out on television and is broadcast wide. As Kyle explains, the money he inherited from his mother--$60,000--was lost after the company Gates pushed as a sound investment; IBIS, found its stock plummeting following a computer glitch. After Kyle refuses compensatory money offered him by Gates, a plan is hatched to have IBIS Public Relations Director, Diane Lester (the stunning Irish actress Caitriona Balfe) explain the "glitch" on-air when the company CEO Walt Camby (Dominic West) can't be found.

When Lester appears onscreen to offer an explanation, Kyle finds her empty Public Relations-speak tiresome, which prompts him to shoot the TV projecting her image.

As the situation grows more intense, the police concoct a plan to have SWAT snipers infiltrate the building and the studio. Meanwhile, Fenn manages to have most of her staff leave the building while she, Gates and a cameraman stay behind.

Shots of people watching the incident unfold from various bars, public places and even Times Square (wouldn't most people be watching on their cell phones? I guess that isn't as cinematic or dramatic as a pub full of patrons glued to a TV) give the audience the sense that the crisis has become a lurid spectacle with a far-reach.

In an attempt to subdue the situation, police Captain Powell (Giancarlo Esposito; doing time as a character that was probably described on page as: Police Captain, blue suit) contacts Kyle's pregnant girlfriend Molly (Emily Meade), who is unaware of the mess her boyfriend is in. But after Kyle and Molly make visual contact, she seizes the opportunity to dress him down before the televised audience; going out of her way to attack his manhood before mocking his attempts to invest. That a pregnant girlfriend would choose that moment to embarrass the father of her child and detail his failings before an audience of ten million seems unlikely but I guess we do live in a confessional culture. Humiliated and dejected, Kyle hangs his head in the studio as SWAT members move into place, hoping to disable the bomb by shooting the receiver in Gates' pocket, which means actually shooting the TV host himself.

The film edges nearer a climactic showdown as Gates is suddenly transformed from goat to hero-seeking-redemption when he deliberately thwarts the SWAT operation by avoiding the bullet. Shortly thereafter, he and Kyle leave the studio and enter the street, where they hope to face Camby in a prearranged meeting.

Earlier, we learn the glitch wasn't an electronic error but a human one, caused by Camby's underhanded stock manipulation involving a mine in South Africa.

In facing Camby, Kyle hopes to force the CEO admit he was wrong. The meeting is pure Hollywood screenwriting hackery, as Kyle is nearly martyred, Gates redeems himself and Camby's nefarious shenanigans become broadcast for the world to see and hear.

In the real world, a CEO like Camby would never admit to a poor slob like Kyle his wrongdoing and he certainly wouldn't have to fear the law. As we saw in The Big Short, people get rich from catastrophic losses and not only do they get away scot-free, they prosper. Foster's film is naive enough to believe the Cambys' of the world get their comeuppance. Jodie, where have you been the last ten years?

The movie reduces its characters to tiresome cliches: the angry everyman victimized by a robber baron, the man who recognizes the hero's virtue and his own culpability, thereby ensuring his redemption and the robber baron himself, who is ultimately brought low, because damnit, the unscrupulous rich just can't get away with their crimes. This is old fashioned hogwash and wishful thinking...at least in this day and age.

Much of Foster's film is just a newspaper headline heated to scorching temperatures and stretched into a narrative. The performances are adequate (Roberts herself is Queen of Adequacy) but nothing more. The film can't even be troubled to properly allow its martyr to achieve proper martyrdom.

Money Monster isn't the worst film of the season. In fact, it isn't a terrible film at all. It's a lot like Jack O'Connell's New Yorky accent; overdone, unconvincing, and just plain silly.

'71

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Yann Demange/Starring: Jack O'Connell, Sam Reid, Sean Harris, Martin McCann, Killian Scott, Charlie Murphy and Barry Keoghan

Yann Demange makes his directorial debut with '71; a tough, harrowing, brutal and sometimes nail-biting drama that takes place in war-torn Belfast in 1971. Demange and screenwriter Gregory Burke weave a byzantine plot where allegiances are sometimes ambiguous and agendas murky as the combustible atmosphere of Protestant and Catholic Ireland is made more so with the presence of British troops.

Jack O'Connell (served with a better script and director than the Unbroken debacle), plays new British army recruit Gary Hook, whose unit is assigned duty in the troubled streets of Belfast. Innocent and untested, Hook learns he is to participate in dangerous house searches and to weigh further on his unfortunate assignment, the operation is to take place in the most soldier-unfriendly neighborhood; an area known to be an IRA stronghold.

It also doesn't help that his commanding officer; a greenhorn in his own right, eschews riot gear in favor of less threatening berets.

Joining the troops in their operation is a Protestant police force, who pursue their objectives with a more brutal modus operandi and a three-man, shadowy, plainclothes unit who conduct their own clandestine warfare on the Catholic population.

Demange effectively sets a mood of tension as the pounding drumbeat in the score keeps the audience on edge.

As we watch Hook sit at the rear of the truck transporting his unit, we see the anxiety and fear in his face. When the troops disembark, they watch a group of kids target the unit with vegetables and garbage. The soldiers take it all in stride and laugh as one kid exposes his bare bottom. But the situation darkens, for the women in the neighborhood begin banging trashcan lids on the sidewalk to alert everyone to the troops presence. And what began in a somewhat humorous manner with mooning kids quickly becomes an agitated scene as a shouting crowd approaches the soldiers; quickly becoming belligerent. As the police unit threatens a family with violence for supposedly keeping weapons in their apartment, Hook's commanding officer orders him to assist in the house search but instead finds himself the object of a police officer's angry scorn.

When he returns to the street, he finds the mob has already started punching and kicking at the soldiers and pelting them with stones. When a kid captures a downed soldier's rifle, he sprints away from the mob. Hook gives chase and is followed by a comrade for support. But the situation suddenly becomes ugly and frightening as the two men suddenly find themselves surrounded and savagely beaten. Worse still, the two soldiers are abandoned by their comrades when their unit drives back to base. When a woman humanely intervenes in the assault, a young tough, Paul Haggerty (Martin McCann, from the Oscar Nominated short Boogaloo and Graham) accosts the two soldiers; shooting Hook's friend in the head, killing him instantly. Before Hook suffers the same fate, he runs from the gun-wielding tough, while others join the chase. After desperately eluding his predators, he manages to find a temporary hiding place but in doing so, he also finds himself alone in hostile territory.

The film maintains a heightened sense of fear as numerous parties; some benign, others not at all, take an interest to Hook's status. And as Hook tries to make his way back to his unit, the story becomes a web of conflicts and warring parties with opposing agendas. Internal strife and a power struggle leave an IRA cell at odds with their leader while the plainclothes military operatives prove to be a complicated group as well, as their contempt for the soldiers is commensurate to their disdain for their IRA enemies.

And as Hook finds himself in the unlikeliest of places. he often finds his alleged enemies--Irish-Catholic residents--aren't beyond compassion--sometimes at the risk of endangering themselves. I don't know that I've ever seen a film about the conflict in Northern Ireland that was sympathetic to both sides. We see that kindness isn't peculiar to one side or the other. But we see that malevolence is also a multilateral trait; the plainclothesmen and the group of vicious, IRA youths serve as the darker elements of the conflict.

Demange, for being a freshmen feature-maker, already shows a remarkable instinct for suspense; keeping all narrative threads tight and exciting.

I particularly liked O'Connell's performance as the beleaguered Hook, as well as Sean Harris as the chilling Captain Sandy Browning; whose mere gaze is enough to unnerve the viewer. Killian Scott and Martin McCann are also terrific--and scary--as the leaders of the rogue IRA faction who hunt Hook with single-minded fury.

I've grown accustomed to seeing one-sided narratives about the Irish struggle; films like The Wind That Shakes the Barley, In the Name of the Father, Hunger and Michael Collins often portray the British (not without just cause) as unyielding, single-minded antagonists. '71 is a refreshing departure from what's come before.

It's also welcome relief from the mediocre sludge of the season.