“Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” follows the story of the infamous Gordon Gekko’s daughter Winnie and her Wall Street fiancé Jake Moore as they struggle their way through the financial disaster that happened in late 2008.

The story mostly follows Jake Moore, who is played by Shia Lebeouf. Moore a young broker trying to succeed with his job, do the right thing and marry Winnie Gekko, the daughter of the recently released from jail Gordon Gekko, who is played by Michael Douglas.

Unfortunately, Jake runs into bad luck as everything around him starts to fail in one of the biggest financial crisis of all time.

This movie is visually captivating. It has numerous metaphors that flow well with the story line and add just that little bit of extra something to the experience. The cinematography is done well. There are many shots that set the tone or setting without the need to use dialogue or subtitles.

At times it is difficult to find beauty in the big city, but this movie doesn’t seem to have trouble. The majority of the cast members are upper-class, wealthy Wall Street workers, so it makes sense that the clothing and living spaces depicted were none other than top of the line.

This movie isn’t one of those sequels you could easily go into without seeing the first. Much of the story comes from and builds off the original “Wall Street” of the late 1980s. Although the plot mostly follows the new school of brokers, Jake Moore and his crowd, it also delves into the past with Gordon and his people.

There are many surprising visits from the past throughout the movie that will simply make you smile as you remember the original. Although the movie builds off of the original, it has a plot of its own. This plot builds itself in a similar fashion as the first, but differs enough to keep you wondering what will happen next.

It is interesting how this film plays off of events that happened in the recent past, most specifically, the financial crisis. Of course, with the film being about brokers and bankers, it has a lot to do with what happened. You see what happened to the people who worked on Wall Street. And you see what someone thought of as happening behind the scenes within these big banks as they struggled to keep their heads above the water. Finally, you see what may have been the reason big banks got their controversial bailout.

Another thing the film focuses on is the fact that green is the next big thing. This is something a lot of us can agree with at this time. Moore spends most of the film fighting for an alternative renewable energy source. He considers himself someone with a focus on the issue of renewable energy and he is rewarded for his skills in this area. Going green is a topic that a lot of people talk about, but that is all they do just talk about it.

In this film they really push towards getting money to finance these projects that people talk about. It is an exciting look into the future of what we could possibly be doing with energy by simply looking at the past.

Ian Winship can be reached at [email protected].