<\/a><\/p>\nJodie Foster, as director of Money Monster, is a woman in control as well. She controlled every frame of this film before it was shot, and she had (at least almost) final approval on the delivery of the end product. She is probably quite happy with what she got across, and believes quite strongly that some will change their opinion on those in the white collars going forward. Foster probably believes this film is about, in descending order, the following: the folly of Big Money, the privileged screwing over the working class, the continued collapse of journalism, and making George Clooney look like an idiot.<\/p>\n
And she is right. The movie is about all of those things. But fundamentally, it is about somebody in control who sees the thing they needed the most being taken away from them.<\/p>\n
As mentioned previously, Patty has the control of her show taken away from her, much like Lee has control of his show (and potentially his life) taken away from him. The thing that pushed Kyle into his new profession of hostage taking was when his inheritance was taken away from him because he chose to trust Lee with his money. Walt Camby \u2013 CEO of IBIS, the company Kyle invested in \u2013 took the money Kyle invested (along with countless others\u2019 money) and tried to bribe a politician in Johannesburg with it, causing the stock to drop dramatically, which leads to all of the above.<\/p>\n
Even Camby, the film\u2019s ostensible villain, ends up having control taken away from him. He thought he would get away clean until Diane, the woman he says he trusts even more than his wife rifles through his passport to uncover his travel-based lies. Diane then sets up the surprise interview that exposes Camby\u2019s more thievery-based lies, which in turn causes him to lose control of his reputation. The film is non-committal when saying whether or not it really ruined Camby\u2019s life, but if his career isn\u2019t mummified, Camby has at least been meme-ified, his reputation forever altered into \u201cthat terrified rich guy jumping away from stuff on that Vine.\u201d<\/p>\n
Foster herself is not immune to this loss of control. I suspect my reading of this movie is pretty far from what Ms. Starling wants me to think, although I\u2019m sure she would be accepting of any positive reading of her film at this point. But Foster wants me to think about the little person, and to hate the big person, and be wary of all the various machinations that keep each entity separated from the other. But what I saw in the movie \u2013 the thing Foster presumably did not intend \u2013 is precisely what allowed me to like this movie. Quite frankly, Foster fails to accomplish what she set out to. And, in spite of her failure, she made a good film.<\/p>\n
To Foster\u2019s (intentional) credit, there are two moments in Money Monster that legitimately surprised me. One of these moments was an effective rendering of something that is in line with the movie\u2019s theme, and the other is something that is a part of the genre but is done in a totally opposite way to what we are meant to anticipate.<\/p>\n
Midway through the film, Kyle\u2019s pregnant girlfriend is brought to the studio to talk to Kyle via Skype, a tried and true diffusing tactic for movie cops all over the world. Kyle will see the love of his life and immediately see all the wrong he has done, and give over the bomb to the police in surrender. This is not what happens.<\/p>\n
Pretty much as soon as she gets on camera, Molly immediately begins to cuss Kyle out and tell him how stupid he is. She even encourages Kyle to kill himself, which \u2013 to put it mildly – I did not fucking see coming. This is not how these hostage movies work: this pregnant woman is supposed to cry and yell, yes, but definitely not wish death on her boyfriend. It was a time-honoured tactic that the police thought they were using, and yet it backfired. The thing they always do didn\u2019t work out so positively for them today.<\/p>\n
This type of clich\u00e9 upheaval is always interesting to me, and it tends to be the place where most movies excite me the most: you give me something I expect, but you give it to me in a different way than I am used to. Give me the standards slightly subverted. Give me what I expect to see, but offer a different viewpoint on it. Take the day I expected to have, and make it more interesting than I could have anticipated.<\/p>\n
Later in the movie, as Lee and Kyle are on the move to an interview with IBIS CEO Walt Camby, we see them passing through a police-guided gauntlet of people yelling at them. Lee sees people dancing like he does at the intro to his show, and Kyle finds people yelling at him as if he were no different than another common criminal. In each instance, what the character thinks about themselves and how people actually see them is totally different. The way you see something inside the confines of your skull is never how it really appears on the outside, and only occasionally will you be faced with such oppressive honesty.<\/p>\n
I was certain Money Monster was going to be something I saw as a mere curiosity, potentially hated, but acted as a successful time-killing bridge before The Nice Guys started at 1:40. I basically saw Money Monster because it doesn\u2019t have a long runtime, and could serve as a mere appetizer to the curse-laden main course that would be Shane Black\u2019s new film. I was certain this was how my day would go. I was incorrect, because I always am.<\/p>\n
And then I spent my evening writing this.<\/p>\n
Invariably, the thing you believe the most stridently to be true will be proven false. The person you held up as an idol will crumble, or the institution you trusted with everything will stab you in the back. The only way to control your life is to assume you are never in control, to roll with whatever the punches may be, and not be too caught up in what could have been. When you do gain some semblance of control of your station, you can hold onto it with gusto.<\/p>\n
But you must never assume it will still be there tomorrow, or else you might as well be stumbling around wearing an exploding vest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Alex writes about Money Monster, a perplexing film.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5374,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[386,515,1284,1283,1282],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/themacguffinmen.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5373"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/themacguffinmen.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/themacguffinmen.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/themacguffinmen.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/themacguffinmen.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5373"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/themacguffinmen.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5377,"href":"http:\/\/themacguffinmen.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5373\/revisions\/5377"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/themacguffinmen.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/themacguffinmen.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/themacguffinmen.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/themacguffinmen.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}