BOILER ROOM (2000)
Grade: B
Director: Ben Younger
Screenplay: Ben Younger
Starring: Giovanni Ribisi, Nicky Katt, Vin Diesel, Nia Long, Ron Rifkin, Ben Affleck, Scott Caan, Tom Everett Scott, Jamie Kennedy
In 1987 the stock market crashed, and Oliver Stone's WALL STREET was released to critical acclaim and packed movie houses. WALL STREET lucked out in its timing; the recent crash gave the film a resonation it might not of had, and though its kill-or-be-killed approach to business was exaggerated, that very ideology was keyed into the mind set of the quintessential Reagan-era businessman. Stone constructed his film as a mythical good vs. evil tale relayed in the fast-paced milieu of the burgeoning stock exchange. Critics and audiences lauded WALL STREET, elevating its status to that of a contemporary classic. I'm proud to say that I will never be counted as one of them. I found WALL STREET to be just as axiomatic and pandering as the majority of Stone's output with its thin caricatures, obvious sentiments, and a charisma barren performance by the young Charlie Sheen. Stone goes for broke in every scene (the same could be said for nearly all of his works). This approach tends to bury his purported message beneath a heap of good intentions. He directs stock exchange scenes in typical hyperbolic mode with people shouting into phones as if they were in a plummeting airplane. It's all an excuse for Stone to ratchet up the emotion with false intensity, rather than explore what these situations are really like. I have a feeling the brokers would be psychologically manipulative (as they are presented in BOILER ROOM) rather than laughably over the top. These guys are salesmen after all, not televised judges.
More than anything I am baffled by why so many adore WALL STREET. The only possible solution I can muster is its release date. And not just the timeliness of the "Greed is Good" subject matter: The film was plumped down in the eighties, a decade in which the one-joke comedy rose to an art form, and a group of glamorous Brat Packers smirked their way through inane high concept, low result movies. In my mind, the eighties will forever be remembered as a decade with not only a proliferation of bad movies, but bad music, bad hair, and bad clothes. Maybe Stone's After School Special set in Wall Street was viewed as a welcome change of pace.
BOILER ROOM is an equally well-timed film with some similarities to Stone's piece of crap. They both feature a consequential father-son relationship, though BOILER ROOM'S is much more subtle and touching. And they are both concerned with the power of greed, yet the men in BOILER ROOM are akin to poseurs presuming to be big shots rather than the slippery-smooth, heartless Gordon Gecko figures of WALL STREET. BOILER ROOM is a message movie as well, though (at least until the end) doesn't shove it in our faces.
BOILER ROOM is about the pursuit of cash and the degrees to which people will go for that cash. As I said, this film is indeed timely in a society where WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE is the number one prime time show every day (bringing about a revolution of prime time TV watching that hasn't been seen in quite a while); not only do we want to be millionaires, we want to watch other people become millionaires! In our super-judgmental, power-oriented culture the desire for money supersedes everything; when you have money, you have it "all". And Seth (Giovanni Ribisi) wants it "all" the easy way. He's a well-intentioned college drop out who gets lured into working for an illegally run brokerage firm (the kind that sells junk stock) whereupon he meets others just like him.
Ben Affleck is cast as Jim, the company headhunter, who struts in commanding the room like a frat boy Gordon Gecko. His job is to influence trainee's into becoming enthusiastic employees by giving a speech that subtly attacks their man hood. It's ironic that he sells these pups the same load of B.S that they're told to dish out to prospective buyers. Affleck's character is obviously supposed to recall Alec Baldwin's similar character in GLENGARY GLEN ROSS, and that proves detrimental to the actor's performance. Affleck shouts, curses and be-littles his rookie employees just like Baldwin, minus the edge. When Alec played the scene he became the part, spewing those brutal lines as if they were his own. By comparison Affleck simply looks as if he were doing a really hammy line reading. The brokers approach their job with the fervor of overzealous jocks: They storm to work like football players on the way to the big game. Rap music thumps on the soundtrack effectively illustrating who these guys think they are: intellectual gangsters. They aren't above a rumble as a test of man hood especially during leisure time where the lumbering Scott Caan seems all too eager to use his fists in minor disputes. We drink up this world along with Seth, and watch him become seduced by it, just like we might be.
As in all cautionary tales, BOILER ROOM begins with seducing us into its illustrious world of profit and wrongdoing, then smacks us with the consequences of all the recklessness. I know this story. We all do. But it can work if it's told with intelligence and energy, and that is how writer\director Ben Younger tells it. As a director of (please excuse my French) mise-en-scene Younger has much to learn. His style is sitcom bland. But his writing isn't. Younger's script is well studied in the vernacular of this bunch; his dialogue is like a junior David Mamet.
Despite the moderate camera work Younger fills his phone-pitch scenes with tension that comes from just the performances and the tightly wound script. The brokers\hucksters counter every customer objection, gently bullying them into buying stock. These moments are filmed like psychological action scenes: a tense confrontation between a victimizer and a victim who isn't aware that he is one.
With the exception of Affleck's brief appearances, the performances are truly exceptional. Ribisi, who has the edgy looks of a character actor, is extremely potent here, working his pale angular face, and eerie, plaintive stare for all their worth. He conveys child-like vulnerability (his character seems to hide in a corner whenever things aren't going his way) in some scenes, and in others he's ferociously cut throat. The Jekyll and Hyde contradiction works well in the movie: Ribisi is confident when it's just him and the phone, but cowardly in front of authority figures including his abrasive father (authoritatively played by Ron Rifkin).
BOILER ROOM thankfully avoids WALL STREET-like histrionics in the sales-pitch sequences; the sales build slowly like a crescendo of intelligent psychological ploys. Those ploys are taught to Seth by Chris (Vin Diesel), a kind broker who alternates between Seth's friend and his mentor. Diesl shines in his minor role. This week I saw the sci-fi opus PITCH BLACK in which Diesel plays a completely different role in an equally effective manner. In that film he has the kind of role that might have gone to Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 80's, and in BOILER ROOM he has the kind of role that might have gone to Elliot Gould in the 70's. Nicky Katt is also memorable as a superior broker obsessed with what he can't have.
Nia Long, as the firm's secretary, (a lone black women amongst many white men) is Ribisi's love interest in a part that at first looks to be as insignificant as most of the parts this talented actress gets, but develops into something more interesting. The two make an oddly likeable couple. Long is smart and brash, and Ribisi is charmingly aloof. At one point he says to her "I'm just lookin' for some chocolate love". It's a terrible line but Ribisi delivers it in such an innocuous child-like way, it becomes sweetly endearing.
Unfortunately, towards the end, the BOILER ROOM turns a tad schmaltzy. There is much crying, hugging, and sorrowful stares. This is okay when taken in small doses, but Younger's conclusion is constructed as a series of these boo-hoo moments, one following the other. A particular misstep is his attempt to show the effect that Seth's manipulations have on one of his poor victims. It's not a bad idea but the execution is lacking, with those scenes feeling tacked on to further spell out the message. That message being, "Greed is Bad". Yes it's patently obvious, but BOILER ROOM conveys it by introducing us to a culture that I haven't seen much of in the movies: The disenfranchised twenty something entrepreneur. And all WALL STREET did was introduce us to a simplistic fantasy world of saints and sinners. BOILER ROOM offers neither extreme. It gives us what is in between, and for that I am thankful.
http://www.geocities.com/incongruity98 Reeling (Ron Small)
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