Boiler Room
I’m a little mystified by the moderately respectable accolades being heaped on this expose of machismo stock trading, although I understand the impulse. As the opening voiceover accurately points out, the business press (hell, the entire media) has been falling all over itself for about six years in an effort to come up with new adjectives to describe the fabulous growth of the economy, how every Internet stock is destined to be the next Microsoft; the way it plays on the front page of the WSJ, you’d think the gutters would be choked with the twenty dollar bills your neighbor lays down on his driveway in lieu of rock salt. If you’re not a millionaire by now you must be lazy or stupid, what with all the quick fixes out there, from the lottery to online day trading. AmeriTrade encourages you to “believe in yourself,” which has got to be the most absurdly self-flattering advertising tactic I’ve ever heard – you don’t see your dentist handing you the drill with a wink and saying, “Hey, what do you need a professional for?”
But people rely on stockbrokers for a reason, not least of which is that the whims of the market are far too complicated for we unwashed masses who haven’t been lining our birdcages with stock options to pay attention to. And just as you sit in the dentist’s chair and hope the guy behind the Novocaine knows a molar from an incisor, you place your savings in the hands of a broker with a kind of blind faith. The insider peek into the workings of a “chop shop” brokerage which is actively out to screw its clients is therefore vindicating, as we get to see the barbarians at the stock ticker get shafted.
So now we know Why the movie is being praised from a societal standpoint. But judged as just a film, Boiler Room is tepid and underwritten. Although it wants to be – and openly references – Oliver Stone’s Wall Street, it recalls nothing so much as last year’s Pushing Tin; both films are intriguing when they show what it’s like to work in a place most of us will never see (a brokerage firm and air traffic control tower, respectively), but falter when they leave that high-pressure environment. Boiler Room starts off strong with an invigorating hip-hop soundtrack and dialogue (but sadly, not compelling narrative) lifted right from the Mamet how-to book: lots of metaphorical crotch grabbing and clipped, obscenity-laden rants about being the Alpha seller. Ben Affleck’s Glengarry Glen Ross-styled master broker gets most of the great lines (“People say money doesn’t buy happiness? Well look at the smile on my face”), but Affleck is no Alec Baldwin; by his third motivational tirade he edges close to parody. The film quickly gets bogged down in go-nowhere romantic subplots (bonus points for casting the stunning Nia Long as the love interest; points detracted for giving her nothing of interest to do) and in giving our protagonist (yawn) Issues of Unrequited Affection with his father, played convincingly nonetheless by Ron Rifkin.
Giovanni Ribinsi handles himself well as Seth Davis, the young Turk who is willing to temporarily shelve his morals in the interest of making a quick buck; Vin Diesel as his Kindly Mentor and Nicky Katt as the Bitter Rival are also solid. But even the hopped-up testosterone of the boiler room itself wears thin after the first hour, as the characters are drawn too thin to make you really care about whether or not they bilk yet another poor schlub out of his kids’ college fund. The film could have used a lot more of the wit flashed when Seth, upon getting cold-called by a local newspaper shilling subscriptions, proceeds to give the telemarketer a hands-on lesson in selling like you mean it.
- Jared O'Connor
MOVIES
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