Review: Anna Gunn shakes up financial boys’ club in ‘Equity’

In her big-screen lead role, “Breaking Bad’s” Anna Gunn stands tall among the wolves of Wall Street, but she still has to watch her back. Her performance as a steely top-tier investment banker, and that of Alysia Reiner (“Orange Is the New Black”), as a dogged federal prosecutor, are the chief reasons to see “Equity,” a drama about what it means to be a female mover and shaker in the boys’ club of high finance.

Written, produced, directed and financed by women, many of the investors accomplished Wall Street veterans, the film neither moralizes about deal making nor glamorizes it. As a thriller spinning around a high-profile Silicon Valley IPO, the screenplay by Amy Fox is mechanical, the plot more contrived than charged under Meera Menon’s lackluster direction. But as a study of endurance and self-preservation in the face of persistent double standards, the movie clicks.

Gunn’s Naomi Bishop makes no apologies for her love of money, and the satisfaction she derives from working a boardroom is evident beneath the flinty facade. When the vise tightens, Gunn expertly reveals her distress, too, in the subtlest of gestures as well as the rare explosion that drives home how hyper-alert Naomi is to the distribution of corporate power, respect and compensation.

That’s understandable when she’s been passed over for a promotion yet again, her condescending boss citing perceptions that she’s off-putting, code for “tough and straight-talking while being female.” It’s all in a day’s workplace politics, until Reiner’s resourceful U.S. attorney circles Naomi’s company. In their wary dance, “Equity” finds its pulse.

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‘Equity’

MPAA rating: R, for language throughout

Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes

Playing: ArcLight Hollywood; The Landmark, West Los Angeles