Wall St. as thriller material

If there is one thing that especially irks first-time writer-producer Ruth Epstein about Wall Street, it is the way in which that world -- and the people who inhabit it -- are portrayed in Hollywood: as greedy, evil and utterly ruthless.

“Everybody has these heinous stereotypes about Wall Street, and it just isn’t true. I find [movies such as] ‘Boiler Room’ infuriating. A lot of the people I know who work on Wall Street are concerned about the environment and democratic causes. They are good people.”

While correcting those misconceptions wasn’t the prime motivating factor behind Epstein’s first film, “The Deal,” she admits to being satisfied that she’s had an opportunity to at least address some of them.

In the fast-paced action thriller, directed by Harvey Kahn and opening Friday at the Beverly Center and Irvine’s University Town Center, hot-button issues such as oil imports and corporate fraud are adroitly played out against a glossy New York backdrop.

There is the slick-haired hero (Christian Slater) wanting to get to the bottom of a deadly big-oil scam, an earnest environmentalist who becomes his love interest (Selma Blair), and Robert Loggia’s crooked tycoon. Car chases and murderous Russian mafia thugs aside, the plot revolves around a perfectly plausible scenario: what might happen if gas prices are double what they are now, and big oil companies have to resort to criminal means to get their hands on the stuff -- such as illegally importing it from countries that the U.S. is at war with.

For Epstein, who spent a decade as a Wall Street executive until she gave it up in 1997 to spend time with her children, returning to the world of high finance for her first produced film was almost inevitable.

“I really wanted to write something about Wall Street,” said Epstein, who lives in San Francisco. “There is a uni-dimensional nature to the way Wall Street was portrayed, and I knew that this was not the place I inhabited.”

Working with her financial executive husband Mark Shafir and corporate oil and gas expert David Leuschen -- both of whom have executive producer credits on the movie -- Epstein fashioned a fictional scenario that seems to have come eerily close to reality since then.

“When I started working on it, Clinton was in office and there was no war in Iraq. Since then, the Russian mafia has become an issue. I wanted to do a story about oil because I had access to the information. But also, there has always been, in the back of everyone’s mind, that sense that we don’t bother to fix the problem. What happened to the mainstream movement to reduce energy consumption? There is definitely something wrong here.”

Director Kahn said he was drawn to the project because of its focus on “the political climate and social issues,” but that it was a balancing act to make sure the tone of the piece was not too heavy-handed.

“One of the biggest challenges was to be able to provide the information without it feeling preachy,” said Kahn from his office in Vancouver, where parts of “The Deal” were shot. “There was a risk that it might feel dry and didactic, so we had to liven it up. We had to balance what kind of information we were giving the audience and when we gave it to them.”

The tone of the movie is decidedly nonpartisan, an important factor given that, as Epstein believes, the story line could become reality regardless of which political party is running the nation.

“Given the country’s addiction to oil, this has the potential [to become real] in any administration, Democratic or Republican. How do you disentangle bringing democracy to an oil-producing region from bringing oil out of it? It’s an enormously scary scenario.”

Epstein most closely identifies with Blair’s character, Abbey Gallagher, who plays a public policy graduate and environmental crusader trying to mesh those beliefs with Wall Street. Epstein herself worked at a public policy consulting firm in Boston, before moving on to a business consultancy, and then to Harvard Business School.

Given her interest in political activism and environmental causes, Epstein believes that few mediums have the potential to reach the masses as quickly and as effectively as film -- especially one that has the look and feel of a smart studio thriller.

“I thought that if I was going to make a difference, I would acquire enough knowledge and then use it in a way that is powerful and meaningful. Film has the ability to reach millions of people and is the one medium that captures every sense.

“If we can get people to walk out of the theater, turn to each other and say, ‘This stuff is happening and it shouldn’t be and how do we stop it?’ then that is the most important thing we can do.”