Media Review - The William Shatner DVD Club Month 1

I've been terribly remiss in following up on the exciting, new William Shatner DVD club. I received my introductory 2-disc mailing several weeks ago, but just got around to watching something last weekend.

The first entries follow a lycanthropy theme: Ginger Snaps and Wolves of Wall Street. I've seen Ginger Snaps before, even writing about it and its sequel on this page. As I said then, I liked Ginger Snaps, but not as much as its intense, bleak sequel. I'm certainly not unhappy to own Ginger Snaps, but haven't felt the need to watch it again since receiving it.

I hadn't seen Wolves of Wall Street before, however. I think I've passed it by on the new release wall at Hollywood video, but never thought to pick it up. It's a David DeCoteau movie, which doesn't recommend it to me especially, despite the fact that I think I've seen a dozen or more of the films on his lengthy filmography. Anyone who's done as much work for Charles Band as DeCoteau has is bound to have made a bunch of stuff I've seen. Since he quit Band's assembly line and started pumping out movies for Image, Regent and City Heat I haven't seen much. I think I saw one of the Brotherhood movies and the Mummy movie.

DeCoteau's movies tend to be technically competent despite some thin budgets, weak scripts and short shooting schedules. I had noticed, however, that he favors gratuitous displays of undressed young men, rather than women. Reading reviews of some of his other movies, I gather he's developed something of a reputation for "homoeroticism" in his movies, which is male-horror-movie-fan-speak for buff guys in their underwear, possibly admiring or at least subtly displaying interest in one another. When women do this in horror flicks, it's called "hot girl-on-girl action," but when it's guys it's "homoeroticism." Regardless, on a purely subjective level I'm much more inclined to go for "hot girl-on-girl action" than "homoeroticism."

But, here we are. Wolves of Wall Street is DeCoteau's film of a Barry Levy script about modern werewolves working as stockbrokers. Released in 2002, it came out in the wake of the dot-com collapse, the Enron bankruptcy, and other high-profile corporate scandals. Stock brokerage firms didn't figure prominently in the scandals, but the themes of unrestrained pursuit of profit (even imaginary profit) and loyalty to the firm overriding all others could have been used to give the film much more resonance than it has. As it is, the movie is something of a lost opportunity.

A lot of werewolf movies use lycanthropy as a metaphor for something. In He Said, She Said, Kevin Bacon's character has some pseudo-profound reading of the Lon Chaney Wolf Man that I can't remember, although I think it had something to do with sex. That's the typical reading of lycanthropy, though, as the suppressed predatory sexual impulses lying just below the surface of civilized man. The metaphor has probably never been more keenly exploited than in Werewolf in a Girl's Dormitory (just by the title alone.) The Jack Nicholson movie Wolf, which I thought was based on Jim Harrison's novel of that name until I read it, takes the dichotomy between civilization and human nature pretty seriously, but doesn't do as much with it as Wolfen, I think.

Anyway, one thing the classic Wolf Man and other prominent lycanthrope stories have in common is the loneliness of the title character. With a few exceptions, werewolves are lone wolves. In some tales, like Wes Craven's last embarrassment, Cursed, lycanthropes are actively hostile toward one another. Wolves of Wall Street takes a different approach you don't see too often, combining the predatory ruthlessness of werewolf mythology with a pack mentality. This isn't a bad idea, but Wolves of Wall Street doesn't do a particularly good job of working it out.

The movie certainly isn't lacking in atmosphere, although much of it is artificial and a bit silly. Wolfe Brothers, the highly successful cutthroat brokerage firm where protagonist Jeff lands a job after every other firm in New York turns him down, is housed in a sinister gothic-looking space bathed in chiaroscuro, adorned with elaborately ornamented furniture and fixtures like a medieval church, and peopled with obnoxious, vacuous young men who are mostly indistinguishable from Jeff. Their downtown New York is almost entirely vacant and under a constant full moon, apparently. The presumptive leader of the "pack" is Dyson Keller, played by Eric Roberts, who always does a decent job. Still don't know what happened to him after Star 80, though. Anyway, Roberts gives a meaty, almost histrionic performance as the alpha dog of Wolfe Brothers; he even pisses on Jeff at one point to demonstrate his hierarchical superiority. We don't actually see the pissing, luckily.

Despite his early insistence that success as a broker is his utmost desire, for which he would sacrifice anything and everything, he is soon involved with Annabella (blatant Poe-ism, although she's called Annie throughout the movie) who has a history with Wolfe Brothers. Since she initially referred Jeff to the firm, this isn't too ridiculously coincidental, but it only compounds the incredible intimacy of this film's Manhattan. Annie's ex was a broker at Wolfe Brothers, so you can't help wondering what's going through her head for much of the movie. She holds brokers in general and the ethic of the Wolfe Brothers specifically in low regard and seems to like Jeff from the outset, but sends him to the firm anyway. Then, after telling him she's not interested in a relationship, capitulates after his unrelenting pursuit (giving him a silver pen as a gift!) even though he's now working at Wolfe Brothers. Maybe Annie is attracted to the stockbroker type even as she's repelled by their attitudes, but we don't get enough information to make such conclusions. Annie and her relationship with Jeff is depicted quite perfunctorily.

Not surprising anyone, Jeff undergoes certain changes after joining Wolfe Bros. DeCocteau makes an interesting and likely unpopular choice by never showing anyone turn into a wolf onscreen. Given the obsession of horror audiences with FX and monsters, I'm sure a lot of people were disappointed. Despite never seeing werewolves, the lycanthropy theme is more than figurative, as the members of the firm are depicted as having superhuman senses and strength, and they die after being pierced by silver (one guess with what.)

The choice not to show any wolves could have been used as an advantage, to shift focus away from the supernatural dimension of the lycanthropy metaphor and toward the changes that result from joining a corrupting culture, but it comes across more like a result of budget limitations. In fact, Wolfe Brothers isn't much of a culture at all, more like a tribe. There's no substance at all to them other than that they are predatory. If even Pretty Woman could spend a little time dealing with the ethics of corporate finance, you'd think any movie could do so.

I guess I'm guilty of reviewing the movie I wanted to see rather than what I saw, and what I wanted to see, apparently, was some combination of The Howling and The Corporation. Still, the movie I saw has little to be said about it. It's not incompetent, but pretty thin and unsatisfying, even on its own terms.