Money Monster (2016)

[Rick Kitchen]

Wow, I really enjoyed this movie.  Well written, well directed, and of course Clooney and Roberts did good jobs.  Jack O'Connell held his own, and then some.  You really feel for the guy by the end of the movie.  I highly recommend it.

[purplemouth]

Agree! I wasn't sure about it going in, but I really liked it. It probably helped that I had low expectations, but I was entertained and that's all I'm looking for in a movie.

[jewel21]

I also enjoyed this immensely. It was entertaining, riveting, and it was also funny at times, too.  I felt for the gunman as well.

I hope it's doing well in the box office.

[Shannon L.]

I really liked this, too.  Especially since there was tension right up until the end.  I also liked that they did something different with the girlfriend and had her go off on the guy instead of getting all weepy and trying to talk him down.  Not that I liked what she said--the poor guy was already down and out, he didn't need to be kicked more--I just liked the surprise of doing something different with the scene. 

[Joimiaroxeu]

This was indeed a surprisingly good movie. I wonder why they chose to run it against a big kid's movie and with a big superhero movie already in the theaters? This probably would've made a better January/February or fall release. Interesting that George Clooney can't seem to open a movie anymore.

[Raja]

3 hours ago, Shannon L. said:

I really liked this, too.  Especially since there was tension right up until the end.  I also liked that they did something different with the girlfriend and had her go off on the guy instead of getting all weepy and trying to talk him down.  Not that I liked what she said--the poor guy was already down and out, he didn't need to be kicked more--I just liked the surprise of doing something different with the scene. 

For me it went on too long, it broke the moment after seeing her when the detective picked her up and with his profile I expected the hostage negotiator to have his hand on the mute just in case of such an occurrence.

[Shannon L.]

Quote

For me it went on too long, it broke the moment after seeing her when the detective picked her up and with his profile I expected the hostage negotiator to have his hand on the mute just in case of such an occurrence.

That's a good point and I can't disagree with you.  But, I did like that it was unexpected.

[NoWillToResist]

I enjoyed the movie but I kind of expected to. I mean, how hard can it be to vilify Wall Street assholes who play fast and loose with strangers' money? ;)

I appreciated that it had a 90 minute running time. I'm tired of movies which are padded all to hell just to get it to 2+ hours. They didn't dilly dally and dither about in the early part of the movie. The conflict appears within, what, ten minutes?

Figured the gunman would die. He was kind of fucked regardless, so 'death by cop' was, oddly, kind of the easy way out for him. :)

My one little nitpick is the number of times Clooney left himself open to sniper fire when they were out in the street. When they first left, he was plastered to the guy's back in order to protect the kill-switch thing. But outdoors, there were often times when there was lots of space and, presumably, the shot could have been taken.

I had to suspend my disbelief though that there was video surveillance in the tiny corner of South Africa(?) where the CEO covertly met with the Union leader.

[Rick Kitchen]

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I had to suspend my disbelief though that there was video surveillance in the tiny corner of South Africa(?) where the CEO covertly met with the Union leader.

 

It looked like a satellite image.

[NoWillToResist]

30 minutes ago, Rick Kitchen said:

 

It looked like a satellite image.

I seem to recall something about the hackers in Amsterdam running facial recognition software, trying to find the CEO, but, why would a satellite have been focused there? And if it wasn't, how were the images obtained after the fact?

[Guest]

I just rented this.  The inspiration for this was that time Stewart eviscerated Cramer on the Daily Show, right?

[ribboninthesky1]

This reminded me a lot of John Q, especially with the significant other portrayed as overly antagonistic toward the desperate male.  Except I actually felt sorry for Denzel Washington's character. Didn't feel remotely sorry for Kyle or Lee, even though I'm all about Wall Street vilification. I felt most sorry for Ron.  He had to put up with all kinds of BS that day.  As harsh and below the belt as the girlfriend was, I was with her about his poor decision-making with their money.      

[Traveller519]

I watched Money Monster on a plane some time ago, and it fell a little flat for me. There were some good performances, but nothing really jumped out. The story was predictable while trying to make it seem like there was a big mystery to unravel, and didn't really have a message to lay down beyond, Wall Street is bad.

Kyle would have been instantly more sympathetic had he been someone who had saved a little of every paycheck (and if this was one of Lee's tips) than having just come into an inheritance.

[ribboninthesky1]

I don't know, guess I have a cold heart, because losing money you willingly invested in a single stock, regardless of the origin, is stupid.  If he'd lost the money because he was an employee who received stock via his 401k or share ownership plan, then I'd have been plenty sympathetic. There are a number of scenarios in which I could have felt sympathetic towards Kyle, but the film chose none of them. 

And to your point, he inherited the money, which is a privilege that millions of working-class, or even middle-class, people don't benefit from when they lose a loved one.  I hope he had insurance at least, so that his girlfriend and child could recoup some of the losses he squandered.