It was filmed before as a TV movie in 1987 starring Judd Nelson and Brian Mcnamara. The new version stars Ansel Elgort (“Baby Driver”) as the leader, Joe Hunt, with Taron Egerton (“Kingsman”) as his friend, Dean Carny, and Oscar winner Kevin Spacey as the con man, Ron Levin, who ends up being murdered.
The movie was made before Spacey became controversial and a persona non grata in Hollywood because of the sexual harrassment cases filed against by several men. So releasing the movie became problematic after Spacey was fired from Ridley Scott’s “All the Money in the World” and was replaced by Christopher Plummer.
Now, it’s finally being released theatrically on a limited run and the producers declare: “We don't condone sexual harassment on any level and we fully support victims of it. At the same time, this is neither an easy nor insensitive decision to release this film in theatres, but we believe in giving the cast, as well as hundreds of crew members who worked hard on the film, the chance to see their final product reach audiences.”Hunt and Karny got the idea for their scheme when they saw a picture of Steve Jobs on the cover of Time Magazine. Hunt comes up with the Paradox Theory, where he says bad can be good and it’s only a matter of perspective. Soon, the Billionaire Boys Club is running their scheme where they use funds from new investors to pay off old ones and support an extravagant lifestyle of sex, drugs, expensive suits and yes, women.
They’ll remind you of Jordan Belfort, played by Leonardo Dicaprio, in “The Wolf of Wall Street” directed by Martin Scorcese. The difference is Scorcese doesn’t tell us to sympathize with Jordan. Director Jamex Cox of this movie seems to want us to care for Ansel and friends, which is hard to do since they committed undeniable crimes.Spacey is presented here as a nebulously gay con man who’s seen chatting with Cary Elwes as Andy Warhol and later preys on the young men with attractive promises of earning millions of dollars. In fairness to him, Spacey (who’s excellent as the crooked US President in “House of Cards”, where he’s also been fired) gives a very rivetting performance that somewhat echoes his current image today after the controversies he got himself in.
The production values are slick as a whole, including the 1980s period production design. It is pretty fast paced and has a good retropop soundtrack including hit songs of the era, including Talking Heads’ “This Must Be the Place”, Frankie Goes to Hollywood’ “Relax” and Adam Ant’s “Goody Two Shoes”.