Money Monster
Director: Jodie Foster
Stars: George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Jack O'Connell
Three stars
Money Monster, in which a TV finance pundit is held hostage by a disgruntled viewer on live TV, is a decent, if slight, real-time thriller from director Jodie Foster.
Lee Gates (George Clooney) is one of those cable TV stars who you suspect has not spoken to a non-celebrity in decades. Flashy and self- indulgent – he is dismissive of pleas from put-upon producer Patty Fenn (Julia Roberts) to stick to the script, for example – Gates is one of those TV rogues who is charismatic enough to get away with it.
This is not really a likeable guy, and it’s not even clear how smart a financial mind he is, but Clooney gives the role that perfect combination of non-threatening smarm and swagger to make Lee not appear completely reprehensible.
It does, however, make it a little hard to sympathise with him when Kyle Budwell (Jack O’Connell) bursts onto the set with a gun, and explosives strapped to his chest. He trusted Lee’s advice on an investment that went awry and he lost everything. The official story is that it was a computer glitch, but Kyle does not believe that and wants answers.
It's an odd pairing: a daffy TV dope against an unhinged blue-collar fool with a hunch that US$800 million (Dh2.93 billion) didn't just disappear because of a glitch. It doesn't make for the most scintillating conversation, but as Kyle moans about the system being rigged, tension builds and it seems as if Money Monster is heading somewhere significant – an indictment of Wall Street corruption, maybe, that movies such as Margin Call and The Big Short have done so well.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t. Instead, this film stays small and fictional in its aims. It is in part interested in the idea of systemic corruption in the finance industry, yes, but seems to be more interested in going after the cable-news media celebrities who have grown soft, complacent and careless.
Foster, in the director’s chair for the fourth time, proves once again to be assured with a steady, straightforward style.
Clooney and Roberts are very good together but hardly get any time to just be charming in this tightly woven pic. It also seems a waste to have them in a movie and to keep them in separate rooms much of it, as Patty attempts to “direct” the hostage situation from the control room.
O’Connell, while committed, is playing too much of a working class stereotype to truly make an impact, and a third act twist really doesn’t help.
Money Monster might not be a great movie, but it is fun to watch even if it missed out on being something greater.
artslife@thenational.ae
