I did my duty by going along to every one of the post-GFC Gordon Gekko greed-is-good films I could find to watch the slagging of the capitalist system in movies made by capitalists, guided as they were by the profit motive in the story lines they chose to portray. I therefore continued this form of psychological abuse by going out to see Richard Gere in Arbitrage which co-stars Susan Sarandon, itself a very bad sign of plot points to come. And I will confess to being reluctant to go but went only because it was described as a “thriller” which is my wife’s favourite kind of film.
What follows is not a recommendation to go see the film for yourself, although I also do not wish to deter you. It gets 85% by the critics at Rotten Tomatoes but only 73% by the audience. On IMDB the audience gives it a 6.9. I would go with the audience at both RT and IMDB which seem to have it about right. It’s not Gone with the Wind.
But why I mention the film at all is because the Richard Gere character is portrayed in a positive way and in all the wheeler dealer stuff which we are manipulated by in the story and in the characterisations, we are made to want Gere to succeed. Gere is no villain – not in the ordinary sense anyway – and while it is hard for me to tell for sure, I would almost think he is meant to be the All American Boy Makes Good. The moral still comes out that devoting your time to such horrid areas of work such as making money is bad for your family relations, but Gere is crafted to show a net surplus of positive virtues.
And just for interest, when I looked up the film on these movie sites, it is the only one ever to have used the word “arbitrage” in its title. I’m not entirely surprised but it is notable that the term is considered neither so obscure nor so offputting that it can now be used in the title of a film designed for a mass audience.
Haven’t seen it, but it sounds a bit better than some of the others. I did rather enjoy Margin Call though, set around the GFC’s initial kick-in (cf Lehman Brothers collapse). It showed a level of cynicism that actually does exist among traders although it was leavened by the usually Hollywood bumph about how tough the world financial system made everyone’s lives. At the end though the Jeremey Irons top CEO character did a brief overview of the financial boom and bust cycle without speciously suggesting a leftist substitute. Message was: get used to it.
Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.
29 Sep 12 at 11:23 am
can assure me that the Susan Sarandon character comes to an early and spectacularly gruesome end? this is an essential plot device for me
larrikin
29 Sep 12 at 12:29 pm
Hackneyed storyline, uninteresting script, tedious to watch except for perhaps the last 20 minutes or so. Gere and Sarandon don’t actually act, not in the ‘character’ method at least and present the audience with Very Boring Characters. Midway through I wondered if this movie was cobbled together to be released a few weeks before the election on purpose, to suggest to voters what may have transpired at Bain Capital (physical similarities between Gere and Romney aside). Just my opinion.
Gab
29 Sep 12 at 6:21 pm
The only good Susan Sarandon movies are the ones that feature her driving off a cliff.
Yobbo
29 Sep 12 at 7:13 pm
Well, yes, but you had to sit through a whole lot of boring femminist clap trap before you got to that bit.
johno
29 Sep 12 at 7:36 pm
That was Thelma and Louise, wasn’t it Johno?
What a shit film…
Winston Smith
29 Sep 12 at 8:02 pm
Can’t remember much about it except I thought it was stupid and that the two girls were dykes with a death wish and no sense of perspective.
Probably why they drove over that cliff. Didn’t really see it.
Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.
29 Sep 12 at 10:37 pm
Thelma and Louise was a great film. Sure, it was sentimental claptrap that played to female victimhood and portrayed men as bastards, but it worked at that level. Women loved it.
dd
30 Sep 12 at 7:22 am
Some women loved it. I am one of quite a few I know who didn’t.
I hate female victimhood. It demeans us. That film was both boring and demeaning.
Some men are bastards. Many, many more are not.
Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.
30 Sep 12 at 7:33 pm
Women loved it.
Not this one. It was crap but the ending was good.
Gab
30 Sep 12 at 7:36 pm
The film wasn’t that bad, the fact that Richard Gere was in it meant I wasn’t dragged to yet another rom-com.
It could have done with a further twenty minutes snipped off but I found it to be mostly a good yarn.
PS Susan Sarandon barely appears. The daughter is cute.
rob
30 Sep 12 at 8:43 pm