Get the Skinny on ‘Money Monster’!

One thing that we were focusing on in the eighties was that “greed is good”

Jodie Foster, George Clooney and Julia Roberts band together to present a social commentary on why greed can have consequences. There is quite a bit of social commentary to be sure. Living wages, greed, the police, television, social media and to be sure, human reactions to situations and becoming desensitized. The movie has a lot of unbelievable scenes. The one I think that most bothered me was the last act.

We will get to that.

Money Monster is a show very similar to Jim Cramer’s investment show. It does go a bit too far when it comes to the entertainment portion of the show. Costumes and dancers were a bit over the top. Lee Gates is the star of the show and he does what he does daily. He gives stock tips. He has no concern for how his tips may affect his viewers until Kyle Budwell makes his way to the set of the show with a gun and two packages.

I want to point out that some may think his way of getting in was implausible, well for starters, a movie is not going to teach you how to take hostages. Secondly, security at any place is fallible. Kyle played by Jack O’Connell, is a screw up, a loser, he is in fact, like his pregnant girlfriend says, stupid. He puts all his eggs in one basket, Ibis stock. The stock plummets and Kyle elects himself the representative of all the people who lost 800 million in one fell swoop. His plan. like Kyle, is stupid. HIs heart is in the right place but he does not have the brains to carry it out.

What does happen is that the director of the show starts to do digging of her own, she is sort of a journalist despite her claims to the contrary. A scandal is unearthed and must be exposed. However the police are in place and ready to shoot Gates where the receiver is on the explosive vest because if they do, they can disarm the dead man’s switch in Kyle’s hand. Gates is expendable and worth the risk to disarm the bomb, I mean hey they have an 80 percent chance of an 80 percent chance Gates will survive the shot. Funny how they don’t do that later on when they have a clearly open shot. I guess we are not supposed to realize that.

This by the way is where the trailer for the movie is a bit misleading. When Gates says they are not shooting at the hostage taker but at him, I interpreted that as people did not want Gates to talk about something he knew, and were making sure he died with that information. It was not that insidious.

Caitriona Balf plays Diane Lester the press agent for Ibis. She even gets to keep her native Irish accent. She turns her back on the CEO Walt Camby of Ibis played by Dominic West. It seems she may have some integrity. Most of Ibis unwittingly helps her turn up the information that Patty (Julia Roberts) needs to expose her boss.

Patty is the real person in control of everything, including Gates, who is in the middle. Gates does try to help Kyle and he too wants to find out just what is really going on in Ibis. It turns out that Walt is indeed the mustache twirler and has been doing shady dealings in South Africa.
Kyle, the stupid one, who we really do not gain any sympathy for nor empathy, is no longer in control as the police evacuate the studio except for Patty, Gates, and Lenny, a cameraman played for laughs.

Patty warns Gates about the police and Gates then takes Kyle out of the studio and here is where the believability really has to be suspended. Gates and Kyle walk to a building followed by throngs of police carrying assault rifles. It is around this time that Kyle tells Gates the vest is a fake. Unfortunately the police still think that blinking light over Gates’ kidney is for a real explosive. Forced to meet with Gates’ and his captor to save face for his company, Walt gives Gates an interview, at gunpoint, with a man with an explosive vest two feet away from him. This was the really big oversight of the film. Camby walks away from Kyle and Gates and the cops don’t shoot him. Guess they still did not have that clear shot.

In the end everyone is stunned for a few seconds and then, true to our form or some may say programming, go back to our daily routines as soon as the commercial is on the air. There are several funny moments that are interspersed to break the tension of the hostage scenes. I think there were almost too many, this is not a comedy, it is supposed to be a thriller.
I would add I did not laugh at any but a couple did make me grin. I only know they were probably funny because some people in the theater did laugh at certain points. I would chalk that up to nervous laughter more than genuine comedy. The negotiation scene where the pregnant girlfriend is brought in would be an example of that. Kyle asks “Where are you I thought you were at work?” as officers in jackets with the word “police” on the back sit behind her in the police ESU vehicle. Did I mention Kyle was stupid? ok good, thought I might have not.

The social commentary were points I believed were valid but perhaps too subtle for most to grasp. They may have been better served in a different movie that focused on one point over the others. The movie did make me think and any movie that does that works on some level for me. I don’t think I can recommend the entire movie based on the implausible last act.
I do think people should have their eyes opened to the messages that the film tried to showcase.

Greed is not good, but that is indeed an old message, we just forgot it for a few decades.

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