Hotting up
Boiler Room (15)
On general release. Written and directed by Ben Younger. Starring Giovanni Ribisi (Seth), Vin Diesel (Chris), Nia Long (Abby), Ron Rifkin (Seth's dad), Nicky Katt (Greg).
Boiler Room is low on physical danger to its protagonist, Seth, but most of the time is spent on a testosterone-high adrenaline-rush. For all that it's set in New York and made by a twenty-nine year old, it's firmly located in the hormonal swamp of adolescence. Though it develops from a personal perspective, it's not an autobiographical, 'My Life as a Broker'. It's loaded with research, and the detail is witheringly credible, even if the plot is less so. All the research the characters seem to do is watch 'Wall Street' and 'Glengarry Glen Ross'. (This may be an in-joke, as those films cast a shadow on the story.)
Like all good films, Boiler Room has several strands, and maybe inexperience can be blamed for them not coming together more productively. When this lot come to a deserved bad end, are they supposed to stand for all brokers, or only the dodgy ones? 'Wall Street' had the same fault line. Boiler Room also inherits that film's thing about fathers. Seth's old man isn't out to win any gongs as 'Captain Sensitive', but if the ship of moral certainty is going down, he's not about to leave the bridge. Ron Rifkin as the dad, gets some cracking lines, and exposes why the film doesn't work: it's totally stolen from Ribisi. Ben Affleck coruscates in his 5 minutes of screen time, but Vin Diesel carries off the man of the match shield. Ribisi, as the star, is too much the observer, too little the fulcrum.
Most films about nineteen year olds are about breaking away, but Seth yearns more to be loved by his family than by his girl. (He's incredibly stoical about relationships.) What story there is to betray in a review carries a subtle message about misunderstandings. The comments Ben Younger's first effort has attracted have all alluded to its obvious precursors - those the director had the wit to sample directly. A more useful comparison is Reservoir Dogs: sweaty male bonding and falling out, corrosive language and sizzling dialogue, and acres and acres of room for actors to act. Quentin Tarantino may have made the definitive recruitment film for jewel thieves. Brokers tend to retire rich, and die in their beds, but even if they didn't, with works like this around, the breed isn't heading for extinction. Broking may not be good for anything, but it's a long legitimate riot. And it pays.
If I had a few million in my back pocket now, and Ribisi's gambling habit, I'd finance Younger's next film. On the evidence given here, he's going to attract talent, he's got a marvellous feel for dialogue and does character from very little, and he can magick tension from just words. If his debut isn't the best movie in the multiplex (and if American Beauty is still around, it won't be), then the reason to see it is that if you don't, in a few years you'll find you missed the start of something good.
