Monday, November 4, 2013

Capital




Costa-Gavras has come out from under some rock to make "Capital," a corporate thriller that clearly establishes he's never spent in a minute in a boardroom.


Not even the pinkos on a Nation magazine cruise would have the audacity to show a movie where the CEO (a totally miscast French comic named Gad Elmaleh) promises to keep stealing from the poor to give to the rich, and the board gives him a standing ovation complete with high-fives and clenched fists. The script is all vaguely menacing financial gobbledygook, at its heart an acquisition of a failing Japanese bank that will depress share values and allow Elmaleh's American stockholders (led by an unconvincing Gabriel Byrne) to take over his Phenix bank using its own money. It's a simplistic idea, but apparently so clever to the director that he repeats it several times, once with a PowerPoint diagram that would get him laughed out of the second grade. It's the kind of portentous picture that keeps making you think it's leading somewhere, like an airplane accelerating down a runway only to brake and turn slowly toward the next. My friend fell asleep for 20, 25 minutes at a time, awakening only when Victoria's Secret model Liya Kebede came onscreen for some sexual antics in her gorgeous London flat or the backseat of a limo.

No comments:

Post a Comment