Once again, Wall Street is one of those films whose influence is widely felt in popular culture. Michael Douglas’ Gordon Gekko is considered one of the greatest movie villains of all time and even Princeton’s Algorithms class on the Coursera platform included a snippet of the famous “greed is good” speech when talking about greedy algorithms. As such, it’s pretty embarrassing to not actually have seen this movie.

Having now seen it, I found myself pleasantly surprised how well it holds up nearly 30 years on. I’ve never been a fan of Oliver Stone for how he thickly he lays out his political biases, but as this film demonstrates, there is no doubt that he is a competent director. It perfectly captures not just excesses of the financial sector, but the specifically 1980s character of those excesses at that time. The financial machinations never leave you lost and it and the development arc of Charlie Sheen’s character is even sympathetic.

Since I also very much liked Margin Call, which was about the 2008 financial crisis, I feel compelled to draw comparisons between the two, especially to identify what is specifically 1980s about Wall Street. In Margin Call, all the wheeling and dealing concerns arcane derivatives rather simple and straightforward shares. This outright rules out any possibility of it having anything to do with running companies or using them to create things. Even Gordon Gekko would probably be shocked by how far removed the billions of dollars being created from thin air are from the real economy.

Notice also that for all that Gekko claims that making money has nothing to do with emotions, he is actually a very passionate person. Indeed, it is his passion and drive that makes his character so memorable and charismatically powerful. Far from being about the bottom line and dollars and cents, his brand of capitalism is very much red in tooth and claw. For him, business is personal and he seems more interested in getting one up over a business rival, and crowing about his victory, than in enjoying what the money he earns can buy.

As Margin Call shows, this is impossible in a financial world dominated by computer-controlled fast-paced automated trading. It’s pretty hard to get personal when everything is driven by mathematical equations, algorithms and abstract models. Even the principals involved seem distracted and confused about what motivates them to continue working this magic.

Anyway, going back to Wall Street, Michael Douglas’ performance is nothing short of fantastic. It’s no wonder that he is the main reason why this film still matters today. Charlie Sheen is noticeably weaker but I guess he does a passable enough job. As Oliver Stone himself stated, Darryl Hannah was probably miscast since she seems uncomfortable about being overtly materialistic.

I should also point out that Stone seems to get some details wrong. Following around a businessman to see where he goes and who he meets with doesn’t count as insider trading and isn’t illegal at all. It doesn’t make sense why Gekko would care about having an union agreement when all he is interested in is the break-up value of the airline. Overall this would have been a stronger film if Stone had been more intelligent in going about bashing capitalism. Deriding people who trade and create nothing is rather silly given the real gains that are brought about by retail companies like Walmart and Amazon.

Overall I still found this to be a fine film. It’s very watchable, very entertaining and works very well in representing the zeitgeist of that era. I’d recommend this highly. If nothing else, you should watch it for the amazing speech.