DVD Review: Wall Street 20th Anniversary Edition

So it's been twenty years since Oliver Stone gave us Gordon Gekko, and who knew then that the "Greed is Good" mentality espoused by the villain/corporate raider would not only predict the future of US stock speculation, but also influence a whole generation of would-be tycoons that would go on to pilfer retirement accounts and pensions from their companies like Enron? Sure, the film looks a bit dated, but when you watch it again (or for the first time), it's scary how contemporary Wall Street is.

Wall Street follows a young Charlie Sheen, who plays Bud Fox, a going-nowhere cold-calling junior trader, as he descends into a moral quagmire after coming under the tutelage of Michael Douglas' Gordon Gekko, a self-made many-millionaire with no scruples about how to make more money. Bud is seduced by the money and the power, and even when he knows that the money he is making is from rather illegal means, he tries to maintain that since no one is getting hurt, it's all good.

That is, until a scheme that involves a small airline that his father played by Martin Sheen (who else?). No spoiler alert here, I promise, but I think you see where this is going.

Michael Douglas steals every scene he is in, and he won an Oscar for this role, rightfully so. He's is mesmerizing as Gekko, which makes it all the more believable that Bud would be so enamored with him and essentially sell his own soul to him. Charlie Sheen played young and corruptible so well back in the late 1980's, and Wall Street is his follow-up to Platoon, as it was also Oliver Stone's next project after winning Best Picture for the Vietnam film in which Sheen also descends into hell.

Stone says in the interminable commentary that he wanted to do a "business film." Wall Street is dedicated to Stone's late father, Lou, who was a trader on Wall Street for more than thirty years. If that really interests you, by all means, listen to the audio commentary available on the first disk with the complete film; if you really don't care about listening to Stone go on and on about his dad, skip the commentary.

Other extras on the two-disk set include an introduction from Stone, which is short and rather pointless, other than Stone really likes to be filmed (he even shows up in the film in a brief Hitchcockesque cameo, but instead of walking a small dog through a scene, he plays a trader in a split-screen montage). There are deleted scenes which do nothing but show you how well Wall Street was restored and remastered and show that Penn Jillette just cannot act. Two documentaries complete the 20^th Anniversary Edition. Greed is Good is a wordy and dull hour of cast members and real-life traders talking about trading. The better of the two is Money Never Sleeps - The Making of Wall Street. This is the only extra that I would bother with, as you can see how things were done on set.

Wall Street 20^th Anniversary Edition is nicely packaged and the film looks great, other than the late 1980's aesthetic that is all over the place. If you can get past the pastels and shoulder pads, and if you can contain your snickers over the Sony Watchman that Gekko says is the next big thing, Wall Street is scary in its ability to show us where things were going in the financial world and the corporation's ability to stick it to the little guy. If anything, the film is worth a watch to remember why Michael Douglas is the star he is.