Review of
Boiler Room
Reviewed by Young Il Kim
Director: Ben Younger
Starring: Giovanni Ribisi,Vin Diesel,Nia Long ,Ben Affleck
On the Blockbuster Video rental box for Boiler Room, it recommends Wall Street and Glengarry Glen Ross. Well, guess what? I saw both of them and they both are great movies. Boiler Room, however, is a good attempt at a similar concept the way Barbed Wire was a good attempt at a remake of Casablanca. Funny thing about all this is that Ben Younger (director and writer—hopefully a one time gig on both) makes references to both Wall Street and Glengarry Glen Ross. As Alanis Morrisette would say, “Isn’t it ironic?”
The story is about an underachieving college dropout named Seth (Ribisi) who sets up an illegal casino operation that causes an obvious tension with his father, a Federal judge. One day, one of his old friends shows up with a colleague who drives up in a yellow Ferrari. Already, the movie sucks. Why a Ferrari? It gets poor gas mileage and has a high depreciation rate. This colleague promptly loses 5G to Seth and tells him to apply for a job as an assistant broker for his firm JT Marlin, a small brokerage firm on Long Island. Seth sees this as an opportunity to go legit to make his dad proud, make lots of money, prolong this movie, and hook up with Abby (Nia Long). At least, three out of these four goals are worthy.
When he arrives, he and other fellow neophytes are treated to an “Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross”-esque speech by Jim Young (Affleck). In fact, Affleck makes references to GGR during his opening speech. And like Baldwin in GGR, Affleck is a no-show for the rest of the movie except in this one room where he makes two more speeches. This leads you to wonder if Affleck was even in the studio. It is quite possible that he did this movie in his living room. As far as I am concerned, Affleck owes me the cost of the rental for forcing me to believe he was crucial to this movie.
After Affleck’s speech, Seth goes to train for a self-absorbed broker. He quickly learns the ropes, generates sales leads for his broker, and gets chummy with the “in” crowd at JT Marlin. However, as he becomes more familiar and successful at the firm, he realizes that not everything is kosher. The firm is basically selling worthless stock and dumping it on the general public before the stock tanks. In the meantime, people who sell these stocks become rich. Somehow, we are made to believe that this is highly illegal when this is happening all the time with Internet stocks. Have you checked out Internet companies lately? Billion dollar capitalization with no revenues and big losses. When will that bubble burst? (sorry for this social commentary. As a note: I want that bubble to continue) Now Seth can either go along with this scam or turn his life around. Rather than give away the obvious ending, I will let you figure out what he does. Let’s just say that if he chose the other path, the movie would be a lot shorter and he will be wealthy. Unfortunately, this movie, his next one and his career will soon be Gone in Sixty Seconds.
