At the beginning of "Money Monster" an
extremely pissed off Jack O'Connell walks into a television studio,
heavily armed, and takes George Clooney's TV host hostage. The guards on
the door don't even blink except for one of them saying, 'Who's the new
guy?'. It's the ease with which he does it that's the point. "Money
Monster" may be a movie of high ambitions and missed opportunities but
if it tells us anything it's that the potential lunatics and terrorists
aren't in Iran or Iraq but on home turf and are walking the streets
with impunity.
It starts brilliantly. As the smug TV host George Clooney is superb, as are Jack O'Connell and Julia Roberts as Clooney's director but it slips into satire much too soon and the comedy is pretty feeble, even if the initial premiss is sound, (O'Connell and millions of other investors have lost everything thanks to Clooney's on-air advice). It's at its best when sticking to the hostage situation and the relationship that develops between the hostage and hostage-taker and while it stays in thriller territory it is genuinely exciting, Director Jodie Foster gives it all she's got and with a better script you can see just what this might have been. Still, it's certainly no dog and as multiplex fare goes it's probably as good as it gets.
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