Boiler Room

Hey, fellow college students! Ever thought about chucking the grind of workaday studying and entering the exciting world of instant money, catastrophic losses, and E-Trade outages--the world of day trading? If you have, don't see "Boiler Room" for informational purposes. Despite its advertising, "Boiler Room" has one of the very oldest plots in all of Hollywood. Thankfully, characterful performances and efficient direction breathe new life into this ancient plot, but unfortunately, even when the actors and director are at their sprightliest, you can hear the story wheezing to keep up.

The plot here is a good match for "The Firm," or "The Devil's Advocate," or the upcoming "Skulls": Young, talented man gets inducted into secretive organization which promises untold riches and concomitant power, but eventually discovers the morally unacceptable nature of the organization's riches and has second thoughts. Upon discovery of the second thoughts, the house of cards invariably created by easy wealth topples, and the young man and the love interest he has somehow acquired must find a way through the resulting muck.

Here, the young, talented man is Giovanni Ribisi, who has dropped out of college and started a casino to pay the bills. Upon hearing of his father's complete disapproval of this course of action, he takes a job at J.T. Marlin, a brokerage firm based in sunny Long Island. At this point, the movie introduces Nia Long as the love interest (and the company secretary) and the fast-paced, testosterone-fueled profanity and ethnic slurring that become the primary modes of communication in the film. Here "Glengarry Glen Ross" and "Wall Street" provide the atmosphere. To be fair to "Boiler Room," it acknowledges these two influences explicitly, as any other course would have been disaster. Still, as "Boiler Room" progresses towards its predictable conclusion, you can't shake the persistent feeling that you've seen most of this movie before.

Of course, you probably have not seen it done this well. Chief among those making this movie not only watchable but enjoyable is Ribisi. His complete lack of self-pity in his flashback narration and total refusal to draw conclusions for anyone besides himself make his character strangely magnetic and compelling, for a man who makes a living out of bilking people. Ribisi is not an actor here, but someone we all know, some of us slightly, some of us more familiarly: the man who can't seem to make life work in the normal ways. As the movie focuses on him for most of its length, the plot feels as fresh as it can ever feel at this point in cinema history. Long does a similarly good job with less screen time. She has a real character as well, and plays her with the same frankness and freshness, so the romance between her and Ribisi comes off enjoyably if predictably. No one else has as meaty as role, although the brokers who are assigned the blockbuster selling speeches (including cameoing Ben Affleck) all hit their marks satisfyingly hard.

Ben Younger's direction, too, is above the run of the mill, which is a little hard to fathom when you realize that Ben Younger wrote the movie too. Younger realizes that effects like demonic shadows and flat blue lighting give themselves away completely if they are not subtle, and refreshingly uses them subtly enough that they have an effect without drawing attention to themselves. He understands exactly how to launch a story in the middle and flash back to the beginning, and the amazingly good rap soundtrack he has presumably chosen gives precisely the right swaggering male attitude to the movie.

In short, what we have here is a superior but terribly predictable moviegoing experience. There just aren't enough words to say how good Ribisi is in this role, and the rest of the movie, except the script, almost lives up to him. Yet it's impossible to enjoy a film where you know everything that is going to happen without thinking hard. We all must hope that Ben Younger directs Giovanni Ribisi again, but on the condition that someone else gets to write the script.

Well, there goes that career goal Lindemann

MUTTERING

I hate to say such nasty things about a movie which features an O.C. song, which rappper of course is quoted below in my sig [which was "In songs I run my genetics/ I gave ideas to L. Ron Hubbard to write books on Dianetics"], but such are the pains of honest reviewing. I would also like to send out a personal message to the two women next to me at the screening of this movie at the Cineplex Odious Wisconsin Avenue, which is please do not have such an unremittingly and unbelievably vapid conversation next time I sit next to you, if there is a next time, which I sincerely hope there isn't. "Are there really such things as ghosts" indeed. Of course, the people in back of me were talking about IP routers or something, so I guess blame falls all around. I need to buy a Walkman.

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