Starring: Carey Mulligan, Charlie Sheen, Michael Douglas, Shia LaBeouf

    Director: Oliver Stone

    HE’S back, he’s greedier than ever, and Brylcreem shares are up in a bull market once more. Michael Douglas returns as ruthless Wall Street trader Gordon Gekko, out of the joint, enjoying his new celebrity as a semi-recovering dosh addict and still looking to make a deal.

    As the man himself puts it: “Money’s the bitch that never sleeps, and she’s jealous.” That charmless maxim should alert you to the fact that this is a male picture about male heroes, with phallic Cohibas (Cuban cigars) and motorbikes. Twenty-three years on, Oliver Stone has given us the sequel to the most unsubtle father-son parable in cinema history, theoretically rebooted for our new post-crash era, but in actuality just as saucer-eyed and uncritically celebratory about it all as ever.

    And just as before, father figures, good and bad, are everywhere. You half expect to see Douglas and his new young co-star Shia LaBeouf join hands and skip through the trading floor singing a cover version of “The Circle of Life” from “The Lion King,” although these days Gekko looks like mangy-old Uncle Scar.

    In the first movie, Gekko was the twisted surrogate dad to the likable innocent rookie, played by Charlie Sheen. Now LaBeouf has the pseudo-son role as Jake, an idealistic young trader who wants to invest in eco-friendly alternative energy. The passing of time has kicked Gekko up to grandfather level, thus creating a vacancy in the dark paternal role. This is filled, plausibly enough, by Josh Brolin, who is Bretton James, a Wall Street shark whose presence fatally muddles the good-v-bad intergenerational contest.

    Evil Bretton subverts the market, and even accelerates the historic meltdown in order to destroy Jake’s firm and drives Jake’s nice old surrogate dad boss, played by Frank Langella, to suicide. So Jake wants revenge on nasty Bretton and wonders if he can’t take some advice from Gordon.

    The twist is that Jakes’ girlfriend, Winnie — who runs some leftie agitprop Web site, of all the silly and unprofitable things — is Gekko’s estranged daughter. Winnie is played by Carey Mulligan with an annoyingly passive-aggressive elfin haircut; her wimpish presence is, of course, no threat to the guys, and she could get a special Oscar for simpering.

    The film has some extraordinary cameos: Stone awards himself repeated walk-ons as a contemporary art dealer; the Vanity Fair editor, Graydon Carter, appears in a restaurant looking like a pop-eyed moose having a coronary when Gekko impertinently addresses him as “Graydy,” and for old times’ sake, Charlie Sheen comes back. He’s doing great. His aircraft business is booming.

    The movie is now being screened in Shenzhen. (SD-Agencies)