FlashCallahan Larry the liquidator buys up businesses and sells their assets. He has his eyes on a wire and cable company. He meets with Jorgensen, the company President and tells him his plan to challenge him for control at the next stockholder's meeting. So Jorgensen asks his step daughter, Kate, a lawyer to help. She meets with Larry, and he is smitten with her, but he still sets out on his plan and a battle to see who can get the most shares, ensues.....Its a film about Yuppies, for Yuppies, with a little bit of romance thrown in.What should have been a biting satire about old school not wanting to part with something, even though its potentially failing, ends up wanting to be a screwball-esque forties comedy, with a little bit of Wall Street thrown in.And while it's an entertaining enough movie, it's not topical enough, and its politics are severely dated. And thanks to the failure of Bonfire Of The Vanities, it's not surprising the film vanished without a trace.Plus, the way the female characters, apart from Miller, are depicted and spoken to, is a little too misogynistic.But Devito is at the top of his game here, showing a more human side in his character like he never has before. Peck predictability steals the film, and before you can say 'Greed is Good', it's all over and we get a sort of happy ending.Now time for a Donut.

ShibanPD Based on Jerry Sterner's stage play of the same name, Other People's Money, rewritten for the screen by Alvin Sargent and directed by veteran Norman Jewison, delivers an entertaining treatise on the practice of hostile corporate takeovers and the tug-of-war between stockholder interests and employee welfare. Danny DeVito plays Lawrence Garfield (a.k.a., Larry the Liquidator), a notorious Wall Street corporate raider, whose most recent target is a New England manufacturer of wire and cable. On the side of the employees' interests is Andrew Jorgensen, the company's leader, splendidly played by Gregory Peck, and his stepdaughter Kate Sullivan (Penelope Ann Miller), whom he hires as his attorney to defend the company against liquidation. Miller is slightly miscast as the seductive, hard-ball playing, small-town-girl-turned-cosmopolitan, but, then again, so is DeVito. He's a tad too likable out of the gate; she's a trifle skewed to the simpler, softer side of the character. Both of them rise to the occasion with such talent and verve that they make their respective roles come off as the ones they were born to play. These are meaty parts, and these two actors have never been better. And you may not predict it, but their on screen chemistry is quite palpable. Jewison shows a nicely developed eye and ear for scene variety and continuity. The writers show a comparable aptitude for scene-to-scene rhythm, balance, and semantic connectivity and contrast. One case of juxtaposition particularly demonstrates this aptitude, while simultaneously punctuating the spectrum of loyalties that spans the film's central conflict. Jorgensen's right-hand man, Bill Coles (Dean Jones), who feels he is owed a "golden parachute" for his years of hard work and dedication, approaches Larry in secret and offers him the right to vote his shares in exchange for a million dollars. Coles has defected to Garfield's side, but he feels guilty about it. "Everybody looks out for their own self-interest," he says to Garfield, looking for some kind of moral reassurance. None is forthcoming. Garfield has already come to that conclusion: survival of the fittest; he is pure capitalism. Shortly after this scene, Jorgensen's wife and Kate's mother, Bea (Piper Laurie), secretly meets with Larry and offers him a million dollars to call off his fight. Garfield can't believe it. She hopes to appeal to his sense of decency. "I don't take money from widows or orphans," Garfield explains. "I make them money." All of this leads to a "proxy bloodbath" in which Larry and Jorgy, in beautifully written and brilliantly delivered speeches, summarize each side of the argument with clarity of position and passionate conviction. David Newman's score is a touch too whimsical for the material, but it fits in with the overly tidy, "happy" Hollywood ending. Then again, the resolution isn't impossible. Larry makes it clear that he doesn't care whether they make wire and cable or airbags, or whether they lose their jobs or keep them, as long as he makes money. And he does, even if it's other people's money.

Lee Eisenberg "Other People's Money" sort of takes "Wall Street" and puts a comedic spin on it. Danny DeVito - in full pumped-up, crazy form - plays Lawrence "Larry the Liquidator" Garfield, a corporate raider plotting a hostile takeover of a store that provides the town's livelihood. The plant's owner (Gregory Peck) sends young lawyer Kate Sullivan (Penelope Ann Miller) after Larry, but nothing goes as anyone planned.This seems like the sort of movie that only Norman Jewison could direct, how he takes a real-life issue and shows it in a manner to which we can all relate. The whole part about the relationship between Larry and Kate was maybe a little unnecessary, but it's overall good that the movie shows the Wall Street types for what they really are...even if you grow to admire Larry. Maybe if you grow to admire Larry, it's because Danny DeVito makes him so funny. The movie comes out very well done. Also starring Piper Laurie, Dean Jones and William DeAcutis in his final role.

Qanqor How many Hollywood movies can you name that are pro-capitalism? The list is pretty damn short. Normally, businessmen are stock, two-dimensional villains, easy targets casually and uncritically hatched out of Hollywood's lamentably simplistic ethos: poor equals virtuous, rich equals evil. Think "It's A Wonderful Life". So it is delightfully refreshing to find a movie that actually understands something about economics. And the wonderful thing about the movie is, for most of the movie, you don't know which way it's going to go, and you're totally ready for Hollywood to just chuck rational economics and yield to their normal sappy sentimentalism. But that's not what they do here, what comes is much more interesting. A very good movie.