A WHOLE LOT OF ZEROES
The last big-screen appearance of a fallen Hollywood player, this dismal remake of ‘Billionaire Boys Club’ is memorable for only that and its record low box-office take,
James Cox’s version of the true story of 1980s Ponzi schemer Joe Hunt was always going to be a tough sell. A madefor-TV version starring brat-packer Judd Nelson was released to little acclaim in 1987, and Cox’s adaptation turned out to feature the last film appearance of Kevin Spacey before #MeToo allegations destroyed the actor’s career at the end of last year. It also doesn’t help that Cox’s own directing career has shown him to be somewhat of a mediocre Martin Scorsese wannabe whose last film, 2003’s Wonderland, was a disappointing, messy account of a botched ’70s burglary by porn actor John Holmes, played by Val Kilmer.
To crown it, Billionaire Boys Club earned the dubious honour of achieving a record low opening-day box office of $126 (R1,900) when it premiered in the US last month.
This has been put down to an aversion by audiences to support a film that features Spacey, whose name is so reviled within the industry these days that he was removed from his hit Netflix show House of Cards and Ridley Scott’s film All the Money in the
World, in which his role was re-shot with Christopher Plummer.
But the truth is that even if audiences gave Spacey a chance, what they’d find is a terribly messy, true-life tale that tries hard to be The Wolf of Wall Street meets early Bret Easton Ellis, without any of the style or satirical ability of either of its role models.
Outsider Beverly Hills pair Joe Hunt
(Ansel Elgort) and Dean Karny (Taron Egerton) have never really managed to gain acceptance by their grotesquely rich-kid set — until they hit on the idea of using Hunt’s enigmatic market genius to lure their buddies into what essentially turns out to be a Ponzi scheme that soon snowballs out of their control with deadly results.
That’s partly due to the boys’ reliance on the seeming support of investment genius Ron Levin (Spacey in one of his most overthe-top, scenery-chewing turns) who, like everything else in their world, turns out to be not quite what he appears.
With no sense of irony, no ability to be smart about the financial aspects of the story and a complete lack of visual flair, Billionaire Boys Club is ultimately a bland, tiresome, badly drawn surface tale of ’80s excess and arrogance that’s been told a thousand times before by far more adept writers and directors.
In spite of its director’s assurances to the contrary, it really is not much more than a footnote to Hollywood history as the final and completely forgettable big-screen appearance of Kevin Spacey. ● LS