It was hard to watch this film with an unbiased frame of mind.
First, it's hard to watch any film featuring a sighing, pressured Richard Gere. I'm not a Pretty Woman fan, but that was arguably the Gere-meister at his most appropriate - a fabulously rich playboy.
But Gere wasn't the main problem in Arbitrage. It was the basic premise, that of a fabulously rich hedge fund manager on the brink of losing it all - his wife, his home, his mistress, his money.
His permanently hollow and self-centered attitude is exemplified when he rolls his car, leaving his dead or dying mistress in the passenger seat to walk off and pretend he wasn't there. And that attitude - indeed the perceived attitude of many people in their positions as managers and owners of deep vats of money as they ran roughshod over the lives and lifetime savings of their respective investors - made him a very unattractive lead.
And all of this might have been interesting when it was relevant, back in 2008, when all of this hedge fund crookedness last came to light. It's like watching either of the Wall St movies now - they're out of date. Not so out of date they make riveting history. Just out of date.
Gere, in his position of Chief Crooked Officer, contends with the need to sell his company before his huge loans are called in, or the involuntary murder charge against him is proven.
There were inexplicable lapses in logic - why would a billionaire traipse down dark alleyways, unarmed and alone, in Harlem - was just one of many.
But in the end, this was pedestrian, seen-it-all-before, lacking in any kind of excitement viewing.
No comments:
Post a Comment