***
The
first half of Boiler Room is highly entertaining. True, it borrows unabashedly
from Wall Street and Glengarry
Glen Ross, but it pays homage to those films with
flair. This story, about a
shady securities firm which uses money-hungry young
alpha males to push bum stocks
on an unsuspecting public, is actually more true
to life than most realize.
I have friends who have worked at or crossed path
with such firms, and many
of them remind me of the young hotshots of Boiler Room.
Anyone who has read the cult
classic Liar's Poker will see some similar personalities
in this film. The first half,
which follows the entrance of young Seth (Giovanni Ribisi)
into this "chop shop" brokerage
firm J.T. Marlin, has a certain snap, crackle, and pop.
The employees of this firm
are like an immature gang of boys with too much money,
but director Ben Younger gives
them smart dialogue and a certain mischevious charm.
They're the types of hip slicksters
that outsiders scorn, but only with a certain
amount of envy. Affleck, Ribisi,
and Vin Diesel are especially good. I haven't seen
much of Vin Diesel except
in Saving Private Ryan, but he's a dynamic young talent.
Ribisi is a unique actor.
Shy, and you can't tell if beneath it all he's psychotic
or a sweet young kid. Unfortunately,
the second half introduces the usual
manufactured Hollywood conflict
and resolutions which always feel like a script
doctor came in at the last
minute to wrap a film up. The rocky relationship
between Seth and his dad (Ron
Rifkin) does not feel real. It is ironic that it is the
introduction of a common theme,
the strained relationship between father and son,
that trips up the engrossing
realism of this film. A smart audience recognizes
that even young men with wonderful
relationships with their fathers could be easily
seduced by the promise of
a quick fortune in the fraternity of J.T. Marlin.
In the end, this is a film
worth watching on the strength of its first half.
When a few of the young brokers
in the film sit around watching Wall Street,
reciting Michael Douglas and
Charlie Sheen's lines from heart, you'll wish you knew
the words too.
