Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps

Screenwriters Allan Loeb (21) and Stephen Schiff (True Crime) have written a sequel to Oliver Stone's iconic 80's flick, Wall Street, and Stone has popped along again for the ride.
It's been twenty-three years since we last saw Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas - Solitary Man). Gekko has just finished serving a jail sentence for insider trading. With just a few possessions including a mobile phone the size of a small country and a cheque for $1800, Gekko is released into the world where no one is there to pick him up.
Jake Moore (Shia LaBeouf - Transformers) is an up and coming trader who works for the just-about-to-crash investment firm Keller Zabel. Jake has just asked his girlfriend Winnie (Carey Mulligan - An Education) to marry him. Oh, did I mention that Gordon Gekko is Winnie's dad? And she hates him...
Jake risks his relationship with Winnie as he tries to get closer to her dad behind her back. Winnie tells Jake that her dad will just end up hurting the two of them. Best leave him alone. But Jake, who is trying to invest in a green energy company, has other plans.
Lots of bad stock markety things happen, mainly to do with Bretton James (Josh Brolin - No Country For Old Men) and his investment firm, and just like in real life, the market crashes. Hello, Global Financial Crisis. Jake's real estate selling mum (Susan Sarandon - The Lovely Bones) is one of the GFC's victims. Jake writers her lots of cheques.
Gordon says that he will invest some money he has left for Winnie in Jake's green energy company but Gordon has other plans.
A very long two hours later the film ends and I'm still have no idea what really happened and I don't much care.
Perhaps ticket buyers could be given a free copy of 'The Stock Market For Dummies' with each ticket purchase? Even after a brief 'lecture' by Gordon Gekko about sub-prime lending and hedge fund whatnots I still could not follow what was going on. I knew people were doing bad things but that was about it. The one thing I did get out of it was Oliver Stone's obsession with bubbles and women's earrings.
I forgot to watch the original Wall Street before I saw the sequel, though I can't say whether or not that would have helped me understand what the sequel was about. There was way too much 'insider' jargon for your average Joe. Maybe Stone can get a few dudes with hand puppets to run on screen every now and then and explain what these rich men are talking about.
The only real stand out performance for me was Carey Mulligan; a small cameo from a well known someone made me chuckle a little, then I thought about how much HE earns...
New York City looked magnificent through Stone's lens; that place has some amazing buildings.
Things I learnt: I will never be a stockbroker; I will never be a stockbroker; I will never be a stockbroker.
It wasn't terrible.
Five out of ten.