director/screenwriter
Ben Younger
producers
Jennifer Todd
Suzanne Todd
cinematographer
Enrique Chediak
music
The Angel
editor
Chris Peppe
cast
Giovanni Ribisi (Seth Davis)
Vin Diesel (Chris Varick)
Nia Long (Abbie Halpert)
Nicky Katt (Greg Weinstein)
Scott Caan (Richie O'Flaherty)
Ron Rifkin (Marty Davis)
Jamie Kennedy (Adam)
Taylor Nichols (Harry Reynard)
Bill Sage (Agent David Drew)
Tom Everett Scott (Michael Brantley)
Ben Affleck (Jim Young)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 118m
u.s.
release: 2/18/00
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official
website
|
Should
a movie be slammed for being derivative if it wears its influences
on its sleeve -- if it even goes so far as to cite its influences
within its own scenes and dialogue? It depends. Swingers,
for instance, struck me as a shallow film importing quotes from
Reservoir Dogs and GoodFellas
simply so that we'd recognize them and feel hip. Boiler Room
is another story. The barking young stockbrokers in Boiler
Room, an energizing and confident debut by writer-director
Ben Younger, have seen Oliver Stone's Wall Street and
the film version of David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross.
They didn't get the message of those movies, though; all they
took away was the romance of greed, the giddy avarice of the
decade of conspicuous consumption.
Our young hero here is Seth Davis (Giovanni Ribisi), who ditched
college after a year and runs a thriving backroom casino out
of his apartment. One night, an old friend (Jamie Kennedy) comes
to Seth's casino with an acquaintance: Greg (Nicky Katt), a brooding
stockbroker for a small firm on Long Island. Seduced by the promise
of quick money, and looking for a way to win the approval of
his hard-nosed father (Ron Rifkin), Seth easily buys into the
firm's spiel. Soon enough, he's on the phone getting investors
to buy into it, too.
Boiler Room is a skillful and convincing rise-and-fall
story. When Seth is hired as a trainee broker and sits in the
hectic office learning the ropes, we're fascinated the way we
always are: I admire movies that pause and tell me exactly how
things work. There are scenes in which Seth rattles off paragraphs
of insider gibberish over the phone; sometimes it sounds like
abstract white-boy hip-hop, while other times you surprise yourself
by actually understanding what he's saying, based on the bits
and pieces of inside info you've picked up.
Ben Younger has an easy way with dialogue, both in and out of
the office. The macho pissing contests are inspired by Mamet,
of course, but they have a uniquely late-'90s spin: Younger nails
the comedy of rich white guys talking like gang-bangers, calling
each other "nigga" and "bitch." The scenes
between Seth and Abbie (Nia Long), a secretary at the firm, have
an intelligent intimacy; the people in this movie (except when
lying on the phone for their living) communicate with a sharp
directness -- Younger packs a lot into a few words. Best of all,
perhaps, are Ben Affleck's handful of scenes as the firm's recruiter;
Younger obviously had fun rewriting Alec Baldwin's classic speech
in Glengarry, and Affleck, locking in on each sentence
like a tailgunner, takes such pleasure in the homage that only
a grouch could really object to it as a swipe. (Part of the joke
is that Affleck's character knows it's a swipe, as does everyone
else in the room.)
As he proved in Saving Private Ryan
and subUrbia, Giovanni Ribisi
is an interesting, low-key presence; you never catch him acting,
or trying too hard for our approval. That's why the subplot involving
his distant dad, with its facile attendant psychobabble about
Seth's childhood bike accident, is a bit of a bummer. Ribisi
doesn't seem the type to care what his dad or anyone else thinks,
and in at least one scene, when Seth falls apart in front of
his father, the actor falters. Despite Ron Rifkin's crisp, entertaining
performance as the father, I would've liked to see more scenes
between Seth and Abbie, or between Seth and his two competing
father figures at the firm, Greg and Chris (Vin Diesel), who
squabble over his loyalty.
In the end, of course, Seth sees the error of his ways; the movie
pauses every so often to put a human face on those on the other
end of Seth's manipulations, and we feel a twinge of shame because
we've been enjoying Seth's games and scams. (There's one classic
scene in which Seth, by now an experienced hustler, bullies a
telemarketer into making a better sales pitch to him.) That's
the real triumph of Boiler Room: It catches us taking
pleasure in these scams that destroy lives, then shows us the
human cost -- yet still doesn't deny that when these guys are
hot and on a roll, they're riding a high better than anything
else they've experienced. Money is almost just a perk: it's really
about the flamboyant theater of closing the deal. |