Clooney gets a conscience in ‘Monster’ – Women directors seen as ‘too risky’

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CANNES, France, May 12, (Agencies): George Clooney plays a Jim Cramer-like television personality who’s forced to grow a conscience when a disgruntled viewer holds him hostage on live TV in “Money Monster”, a serviceable, if slight, real time thriller from director Jodie Foster.

Clooney’s character Lee Gates is one of those cable news stars who probably hasn’t spoken to a non-celebrity in decades. His flashy show opens with him in dancing in costume with two gyrating ladies at his side like he’s in his own rap video, and the vulgarity just escalates from there with ridiculous graphics and sound effects that even a shock jock radio host would likely find tasteless.

We see him being dismissive of the pleas from his put-upon producer Patty Fenn (Julia Roberts) to stick to the script, or at least give her a heads up as to where he’s planning to go, but Lee Gates is one of those roguish improvisational types who is somehow charismatic enough to get away with it. This is not really a likable guy, and it’s not even clear how smart a financial mind he is, but Clooney has that perfect combination of non-threatening smarm and swagger to make Lee not completely reprehensible.

It does, however, make it a little hard to care when Jack O’Connell’s character Kyle comes skulking in through the back of the set with a gun and a vest full of explosives made especially for Lee. Kyle, we find out, trusted Lee’s advice on an investment that went awry when a stable company’s stock plummeted and he lost everything. The company’s explanation and the narrative in the press is that it was just a computer glitch, but Kyle’s not buying it and wants some answers.

It’s an odd pairing, this somewhat daffy television dope against an unhinged blue collar fool with a hunch that $800 million didn’t just disappear because of a glitch. Although it doesn’t make for the most scintillating conversation, as Kyle wails about the system being rigged tension builds and it seems like perhaps “Money Monster” is heading somewhere significant — an all-out indictment of Wall Street corruption, maybe, that movies as different as “Margin Call” and “The Big Short” have done so well.

Aim

Unfortunately, it doesn’t.

Instead, “Money Monster” stays rather small and fictional in its aim. It’s partially interested in the idea of systemic corruption in the finance world, sure, but it seems to be even more critical of the cable news media types who have grown soft, complacent and careless.

Foster, in the director’s chair for the fourth time, proves once again to be an assured and malleable in this role, ready to proficiently fulfill the needs of any genre with a steady, straightforward style. “Money Monster” feels like a solid ’90s studio thriller in some ways — a movie for adults and made by adults with a crop of charismatic A-listers at the center.

Clooney and Roberts, by the way, are very good together but hardly get any time to just be charming in this tightly-woven pic. It also seems like a cruel trick to have those two in a movie and to keep them in separate rooms for a large portion of it, communicating only through a speaker system as Patty attempts to “direct” the hostage situation from the control room. O’Connell, while committed, is playing too much of a working class stereotype to truly make an impact, and a third act turn really doesn’t help.

“Money Monster” might not be a great movie, but it is a comforting movie-movie that’s still fun to watch even if it whiffed on being something more.

“Money Monster”, a Sony Pictures release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for “language throughout, some sexuality and brief violence.” Running time: 90 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.

Jodie Foster, said many studio bosses still mistrusted female directors as “too great a risk to take.”

The Oscar-winning actress, who began her career at the age of three and is one of a handful of females in Hollywood to carve out a successful directing career, highlighted the challenges women face in the industry at a conference on the sidelines of Cannes.

She noted “drastic changes” on film sets from her years as a child actor, when the only women on set were the person playing her mother or the make-up artist.

But “the one arena where it hasn’t really changed at all is directing for mainstream studio movies,” she observed.

Study

In the United States, only nine percent of directors are women, according to a 2016 study from the San Diego university.

Another study released this month by the European Women’s Audiovisual Network found that only one film in five in Europe was made by a female director.

Foster said the turbulent economy and changing technologies had left studio bosses more risk-averse than ever.

“I think studio executives are scared, period, (and) for some reason women are lumped into that category of ‘too great a risk to take’.”

However Foster, who won Oscars for her roles in “Silence of the Lambs” and “The Accused”, admits that having grown up in the industry it was easier for her to become part of the boy’s club than for other women struggling to make it.

The 53-year-old is the first of a series of Hollywood stars, including Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis, who will be talking at the “Women in Motion” conference during Cannes.

Foster has directed several movies, as well as episodes of television series “Orange is the New Black” and “House of Cards”.

Her first mainstream genre film “Money Monster”, starring Clooney and Julia, premiered in Cannes on Thursday.

She said she did not think there was “some big plot” by men trying to put women down in the film business, but it was more about being stuck in traditional models.

She described the difficulty in placing trust in a first-time director, and placing the vision of a multi-million-dollar film in their hands.

“Everyone, before they shake hands to bring a director on kind of quakes in their boots because they don’t know what is in front of them,” she said.

“I was once in a movie where a director — who was a really smart guy — spent the entire movie in his bathroom calling his wife.”

“You’re looking for the best bet and it is hard to look at a face that is 100 percent different to yours and that you carry traditional perceptions about and you worry you are going to make a bad choice.”

 

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