Michael Douglas deservedly won an Oscar for his portrayal of the ruthless, chain-smoking capitalist guru, Gordon Gekko, who leads Charlie Sheen's Bud Fox down the garden path to Wall Street's hidden abyss. Good supporting cast includes Sean Young, James Spader, reliable Hal Holbrook, and the wonderful Sylvia Miles. Tight direction, perceptive script with realistic techno-lingo, fabulous production design, dazzling cinematography of the Manhattan skyline, and hip 80's music rev up the technical quality of this Oliver Stone "message" film. If only the message had been more reassuring.

Gekko is a villain and an outlaw, but mostly he comes across to viewers as a worldly tough guy, a charming bully with a glamorous lifestyle. We see his high-class mega-office, his plush home and chic wife, his expensive paintings, his rapid-fire commands to his robotic lieutenants, his snazzy clothes and "in vogue" friends. Here and there we see his frustrations, but that only accentuates his toughness. We do not see him suffer, nor do we see the consequences of his selfish, Machiavellian behavior.

As a result, to viewers, especially to those youthful, bright, materialistic Americans with a smug, "can do" attitude, and disdain for ethics, Gekko is, unfortunately, someone to admire, a Wall Street role model.

(The speech about the 1% is more important than the greed speech.) "It's not a question of enough, pal. It's a Zero Sum game - somebody wins, somebody loses. Money itself isn't lost or made, it's simply, transferred - from one perception to another. Like magic." If you made a list of best New York movies, it would probably be blasphemous not to include work from Woody Allen or Martin Scorsese. However, for me, this might be the ultimate movie set in the financial capital of the world. I guess this is obvious, but it's hard to replicate the chemistry that a real father and son have. Martin and Charlie Sheen are near perfect together in every scene. Michael Douglas reaches god-mode as Gordon Gekko. Maybe my favorite performances of the 1980s? The most famous cellphone in the history of movies? If you want to have some fun, do a bit of research on the gigantic cellular device. The mash-up of everyone buying/selling stock on Wall-Street is pure ecstasy. Inject it straight into my veins! The screenplay is perfect. So smart. As an economics teacher, I'm probably biased, but I'm hooked on every word! A masterpiece!

Wall Street" is a movie that seems to spark much debate. Basically, it is the working out of a moral struggle within young Wall Street trader Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) between the values with which he was raised of hard work and success through actual creation, versus those of his mentor Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) who succeeds through corporate raiding and "creative destruction". From Bud's viewpoint his dad's (Martin Sheen's) road map for success and happiness seems old-fashioned to the point of being prehistoric compared to Gekko's, until Gekko sets his sights and his wrecking ball on his father's company, and Bud is forced to choose.

Many people associate this film with a liberal versus conservative viewpoint on business, a wild-west economy versus a planned economy and relegate this film to 1980's era nostalgia, like the now humorously giant cell phone Gekko is talking on as he walks along the beach. It is said that neither extreme works and that we've gradually settled towards something in the middle. However, the Gekkos of this world are smarter than that, and over the past 20 plus years they have set up an economic system that serves them well. What we now have is a situation where the haves and have-mores have a planned - almost Soviet - system in which the rules stratify them at the top. I cite the changes in bankruptcy law as exhibit A. The members of the labor force that serve them, however, are in the wild-west economy that was once advocated for everyone. Some will rise to the stratified top in this situation, but the vast majority will remain at the bottom shooting it out with each other - for scarce good jobs, good health care, education, etc. Thus, to me, Wall Street is just an opening chapter in the saga of how economic forces and attitudes toward them have changed, not the portrait of a 25 year-old fad that has come and gone.