Ok folks, here's a look at the script for THE BOILER ROOM, that Ben Affleck movie that... well, we keep hearing is "Wall Street meets Glengarry Glenn Ross", but is it... really? Well, our spy here is about to tell us, the review does go into details, but doesn't reveal the third act. If you don't want to know the entire set up, etc... then Don't read this. If you do... then by all means continue...
Howdy!
Just read Ben Younger's screenplay for The Boiler Room which I've heard described as both "a really mean Wall Street" and "Wall Street meets Glengarry Glenn Ross".
Indeed, it is similiar to both films. The hero (Seth Davis, who I assume Ben Affleck will be playing) is a college dropout who runs an illegal casino out of his house, much to the chagrin of his Federal Judge father.
One of the casino goers is impressed with Seth and invites him to check out the investment firm that he works at which, unlike most, trains hungry, driven, white trash kids from around the outskirts of New York.
The kids, who are rushed through training for their brokers' licenses, work in a large room called (natch) the Boiler Room. As in Glengarry, they are given cards of prospective investors to call but it is much more like the scenes in Wall Street when Budd Fox (Charlie Sheen) is a peon broker calling potential investors. Competative, rough and tumble wannabe players, the young men in the Boiler Room are fierce to each other and to the real power players.
Unlike other finance films, however, Boiler Room is not about a changing of the guard but about the fierceness of the young up-and-commers. It doesn't take long before Seth begins to realize that the firm plays fast and loose with the law. Soon, he gets involved with the black, streetsmart secretary (Nia Long's character) - who is the only minority at the firm (because, she explains, they pay her 80 grand a year and she has a sick mother to take care of).
ANYHOW, Seth considers quitting but his father (who believes Seth has finally found a legit job) is finally proud of him and finally treating him well. The FBI begin to catch onto the firm, which basically can afford to give hugely illegal percentages to the "kids" because it is running a scam that takes fake companies public - all of the stock sold to investors climbs really fast and then crashes into nothing. The feds squeeze Seth's girlfriend, wanting her to give him up so he can turn states evidence and bring the firm down.
I won't give away the 3rd act but basically Seth and his father get mixed up with the law as they try to get him out of the firm. The ending is clever and involves the vengeance of one of the faceless investors who was victimized by the firm. I say "clever" but not very good or very satisfying - it's a little too neat and it avoids some of the interesting moral problems raised in the script.
Oh, well, should yield a "Rounders" quality film.
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Ro-Bear Berbil
