MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Dealers’ Takes On World of High Finance

“Dealers” (at the Cineplex Odeon Century City) looks like the sort of movie that might have resulted if some would-be high-rollers caught a screening of Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street” and decided that its setting--the sleek world of high finance--had potential but its concept had to be turned around.

After all, what’s wrong with a little hustle, a little initiative, a lot of money? Instead of a downer of a movie about amoral, greed-crazed hustlers who live glittering high lives, get exposed and go to jail, why not send the audience out happy by making the hustlers into heroes and by making the movie into a slightly disguised celebration of mindless hedonism, conspicuous consumption and reckless money manipulation?

If the sleazier characters in “Wall Street” ever dreamed, this is the sort of dumb fantasy they might conjure up. They would have aggressive, sexy young brokers like Briton Daniel Pascoe (Paul McGann) who live on a country lake and commute to the city by seaplane. And they would cook up heroines like American Anna Schumann (Rebecca DeMornay), a blond, svelte sex bomb with a mind like a steel trap, whose favorite salutation is “Let’s make money!” and who cruises the computer aisles with a walk that might be described as a power jiggle.

They would give us lonely, salty father figures like Robby Barrell (Derrick O’Connor)--a boozed-out, coked-out paterfamilias, fired from the bank and content to putter around Pascoe’s house, cook up gourmet meals and plan stock strategies. The villain, of course, would be the conservative, play-it-safe boss (John Castle) who doesn’t understand that to win big, you’ve got to risk big.

There would be a fairy godfather of a character in power (Paul Guilfoyle), preferably a look-alike for Lee Iacocca, and instead of a big fight or a last-minute rescue, the ending would turn on a rise in the American GNP. The other dealers would be a daffy, crazy, lovable bunch--a real team: comical Germans and big, loud Welshwomen (Sara Sugarman).

“Dealers” is soggy with the sentimentalism of people who kid themselves that they’re not sentimental. Halfway through, Pascoe--whose name suggests a softer version of “Wall Street’s” monster, Gordon Gekko--sneaks into Anna’s hotel and fills up her room with more balloons than you’ve seen since “A Thousand Clowns.” Would a movie that wasn’t wearing its greed on its sleeve, like this one, try so hard to persuade us there’s a heart in its pocket?

The director, Colin Bucksey, (“Blue Money”), has too much style for his own good. It’s like a chrome trim laid over all a malfunctioning engine full of empty characters and vacuous ethics. Bucksey apes the super-salesman panache of the prime British TV ad directors, the metallic surfaces and gleaming, lucid setups. But we might guess we’re in for trouble when, shortly after a major character commits suicide, the movie blares out, unsatirically, a rock song by Pray for Rain called “Corporate World.”

“Dealers” has one superb performance: O’Connor’s, poking some believability and bitterness into this fancy trash. But the film’s bottom line suggests that it’s all right to play havoc with the market, spy on and blackmail your bosses into bed, accumulate illegal insider information and parasitic paper fortunes--and possibly wreck jobs just like Wall Street’s Gekko--as long as you’re a cute guy with a nice smile, a seaplane and a lot of balloons. There’s a lot of hardware in “Dealers” (MPAA rated R for sex and language)--much of it supplied by Reuters’ financial services--but, emotionally, artistically and morally, it’s bankrupt.

‘DEALERS’

A Skouras Pictures Inc. release. Producer William P. Catlidge. Director Colin Bucksey. Script Andrew MacLear. Music Richard Hartley. Camera Peter Sinclair. Production design Peter J. Hampton. Editor Jon Costelloe. With Paul McGann, Rebecca DeMornay, Derrick O’Connor, John Castle, Paul Guilfoyle, Rosalind Bennett, Sara Sugarman.

Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes.

MPAA rating: R (younger than 17 requires an accompanying parent or adult guardian).