Film Review: Dumb Money is no David versus Goliath tale
Paul Dano is terrific as geeky, principled Keith Gill in Dumb Money
(15A) is a phrase used by Wall Street traders to describe amateur investors, even if the Wall Street behemoths are very happy to hoover up any dumb money that gets thrown around.
But when a rag-tag army rally around maverick investor Keith Gill, aka Roaring Kitty (Paul Dano), and start backing Game-Stop stocks against multi-billion hedge funds led by Ken Griffin (Nick Offerman), Steve Cohen (Vincent D’Onofrio) and Gabe Plotkin (Seth Rogen), the scene is set for a once-in-a-generation Wall Street coup.
Craig Gillespie’s movie, which is adapted from Ben Mezrich’s book , takes a similar approach to explaining complicated financial manoeuvring as (2015), although it lacks that film’s satirical edge.
Here, Keith and his fellow investors are straightforwardly pitched as David taking on Goliath, with Jenny (America Ferrara), for example, a debt-burdened nurse who turns to investing in a desperate bid to secure a future for her young family.
A more apt analogy, perhaps, is another employed in the film, which is that of hyenas versus lions: hyenas might need to band together to defeat a lion, yes, but lions and hyenas are after exactly the same thing.
In other words, the idea that Keith and Jenny are engaged in some kind of ‘class warfare’ against a Wall Street rigged in favour of the establishment is utterly fanciful: everyone here is after easy money.
However, Paul Dano is terrific as the geeky, principled Gill, and he gets strong support from Shailene Woodley as Keith’s long-suffering wife Caroline.
