Dumb Money

There is a strange aspect to this movie, a measure of confusion that pervades the story. Based on the movie’s marketing and general vibe, you go in and watch with the impression that this story of lower class Davids sticking it to investor class Goliaths is on the side of the poor people. Yet many of the film’s trappings seem to indicate that the term “dumb money”—the rich assholes’ sneering characterization of two-bit retail investors—may not be so far off the mark. For one, the presentation is awash in rap “music”—and not exactly clever rap, either, but more like some of the ugliest sounding, meanest sounding, and, yes, stupidest sounding noise the producers could have found. The aural choices seem to imply that the cohort of paycheck-class types are exactly as churlish and ignorant as the title insult insists they are. Those same characters themselves, throughout the story, persistently make the case against the “short squeeze” they are engaging in, and the outcome many of them foresee does, in fact, eventually come to pass, in real life if not in reel life. (GameStop stock, when I watched this flick, was trading at around $20 a share—hardly the several hundred dollars per the price achieved in the midst of the mania.) Finally, the end notes before the credits relate that the hedge fund types, in the wake of all this, are now more careful about shorting stocks—all well and good, I suppose, but hardly the revolutionary outcome the squeeze participants were hoping to achieve, by their own presented testimony. So is this movie actually making an admiring case for the poor people? Or is this an exercise in declaring that those on the bottom really can’t win? Given the big picture, my guess is this film is firmly on the side of the little people, but presents that viewpoint somewhat incompetently. Thus, an interesting story and some good performances, in a story that holds interest for anyone with a thirst for economic fairness, get wasted by filmmakers who simply don’t quite make the case in favor of their heroes. A “should have been” movie that just isn’t quite. (Note: the library DVD I used to watch this movie had some playback issues, especially late in the running time. I undoubtedly missed a few crucial scenes, which might have changed my opinion on the piece overall. Watching comes with risk.)

The Suicide Squad

This one is very slick and stylish. Also, it's funny and violent and gory. What it isn’t is riveting all the way through. The movie comes across more a series of set pieces and setups and punchlines rather than a fully-realized and well-told narrative. Director James Gunn--he's getting the lion's share of the credit for this flick, whatever it may be--pays a lot of attention to "don’t this look cool?" but not as much to "does any of this make much sense?" Viewed on its own terms, the film is entertaining to a point, funny to a point, and worth a watch, if you're the kind of viewer who likes this sort of thing. That there is the rub: is this your kind of movie, and are you this kind of movie's audience. It's a question that's more fraught than you might think. It's hard to deny, from a rational and (ironically) bloodless point of view, that a movie like this is, in certain respects the sign of a sick society. It’s too casually bloodstained and crude to be anything you’d consider quality entertainment. And if you’re someone who is entertained by this flick--and many will fall into that category, perhaps even me--then you should probably start asking some questions about yourself, if not the society as a whole. That's all a little bit deep for a movie that clearly does not aim to be deep itself, but sometimes the big questions arise from the minor matters. From a pure filmgoer's standpoint, this one is probably a near-miss--and if that dooms any potential sequels, maybe that's not a bad thing.