Money Monster

Jodie Foster’s Money Monster crackled and popped like a first-rate thriller but lacked sufficient narrative to get me to care about the people at the center of the story (Clooney and Roberts). It is saved, ultimately, by actor Jack O'Connell, whose highly engaging angry young man Kyle Budwell drives the economical plot to what is, unfortunately, a predictable ending. Clooney stars as a television investment guru and Roberts the director of his circus of a show. Enter stage right disgruntled Everyman Kyle with a gun and a vest filled with explosives and a simple demand – to know why a stock Clooney’s Lee Gates had promoted as a sure thing only a few weeks before had recently lost 800 million dollars, ruining Budwell and thousands of other investors. As crafted by Foster, as serious a film director as any, the story of this catastrophe stays a little too murky, the last reel showdown a bit too rushed and pat for my taste. Still, the movie’s strength is the middle section when Budwell’s pain – in all of its human dimensions – becomes clear and the focus of the picture.