Nightmare on Wall Street

Hollywood reached its maximum natural disaster potential roughly two decades ago, sending down a hail of movies about megastorms (Twister), supervolcanoes (Dante’s Peak), and earthbound asteroids (Deep Impact, Armageddon). Although the industry still peddles in weird weather (Sharknado 4), studios seem to have turned their attention to a new type of scary movie—the unnatural disaster flick, which derives its shocks not from acts of God but from acts of bankers. Films in this category include Margin Call (2011), Too Big to Fail (2011), The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), The Big Short (2015), and now Money Monster, which moves the nascent genre into its adolescent, formulaic phase.

Directed by two-time Oscar winner Jodie Foster—whose most recent behind-the-camera credits include episodes of Netflix’s House of Cards and Orange Is the New Black—Money Monster (in theaters on May 13) presents a familiar antihero in Lee Gates (George Clooney), a bombastic Jim Cramer-esque television host. The self-proclaimed wizard of Wall Street, he’s a mouthpiece who influences the market with smug claims that certain stocks are “safer than a savings account.” But when one of Gates’s sure things, Ibis Clear Capital, bottoms out overnight, losing $800 million because of what’s dubiously described as a “computer glitch,” Gates is taken hostage on-air by 24-year-old deliveryman Kyle Budwell (British actor Jack O’Connell, chewing on a Brooklyn accent here to mixed effect). Patty Fenn (Julia Roberts), Gates’s longtime producer, becomes a de facto crisis negotiator, keeping Gates engaged with Budwell, who’s lost his life savings to the bum investment, while feverishly tracking Walt Camby (Dominic West), Ibis’s mysteriously absent chief executive officer.