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Rogue Trader
*
Rated on a 4-star
scale
UK
Directed by James Dearden
Written by James Dearden
Based upon the book by Nick Leeson and Edward Whitley
CAST.....
Ewan McGregor..... Nick Leeson
Anna Friel..... Lisa Leeson
Yves Beneyton..... Pierre Bonnefoy
Betsy Brantley.....Brenda Granger
Caroline Langrishe..... Ash Lewis
Lee Ross..... Danny Argyropoulous
Tim McInnerny..... Tony Hawes
Irene Ng..... Bonnie Lee
Simon Shepherd..... Peter Norris
John Standing..... Peter Baring
Tom Wu..... George Seow
Pip Torrens..... Simon Jones
Daniel York..... Henry Tan
"Despite rumours... I never profited... to be
brutally honest, I sometimes wish that I had."
This is the declaration Nick Leeson makes at the
end of "Rogue Trader", in reference to his crimes. Like so
much in this movie, the problems with the statement are vast and obvious.
Firstly, it's not brutal honesty, it's common sense -- of course profit is
better than loss. Leeson wouldn't know honesty if he'd just read a book on
the concept, and indeed this "brutally honest" statement is a damn lie. Leeson
wrote a bestselling novel about how he defrauded his employers, and he's
also been promised a large chunk of this movie's gross.
I'm not surprised. The filmmakers obviously wish
him well. "Rogue Trader" is a repulsive love letter to Leeson, a sick and
twisted crook, as well as, it seems, a compulsive liar. It's also an incompetent
production -- stupid, uninteresting and stylistically
inappropriate.
The story is well-known. Leeson (Ewan McGregor)
was a British stock trader, working in Singapore earlier this decade on behalf
of Barings Bank, one of London's oldest financial institutions. He wanted
to make the big time, as all these yuppies do, but Leeson didn't see failure
as an option, and so covered up his losses by secretly using Barings's own
money. As his losses got worse, his scheme got harder to cover up, and when
this mess came to a head, Barings collapsed. The financial world was shocked
that one young, goofy little oik could accidentally bring down such an
established organisation as Barings, especially since he'd only been employed
there for two years. It was front-page news for quite some
time.
Despite all the attention the newspapers paid
to it, however, they never really got me interested in the story. There was
nobody to root for -- both the fraudster Leeson and the defrauded bosses
of Barings were greedy capitalist suits. If you want to make drama out of
this story, then you have to explore something particular about it -- perhaps
the true weakness of the seemingly impenetrable corporate world, perhaps
the seductive power of greed, perhaps the stress of working in a dog-eat-dog
environment.
"Rogue Trader" does none of this, and simply outlines
the story in even less detail than we already know it. The drama it does
have is pure soap-opera, unhelpfully underscored by American golden oldies
and 1990s Britpop. The whole film is a bombardment of cheesy dialogue and
crass slang, flashy colours and loud music. It spells everything out like
children's television, with Big Closeups and Big Changes In The Volume Of
The Music, just to make sure we follow the plot. It's obviously aimed at
retarded twentysomethings who don't belong in a cinema, but in cheap Ibiza
bars. The writing and editing make every scene jump quickly to the next,
before we notice that none of the film has any substance.
Nor does the film involve us in the activities
and mechanics of the trading floor. The camera is just swished round the
pit a few times, intercut with shots of McGregor, looking either happy or
tense, in annoyingly jazzy montages. Everything the film thinks we need to
know is explained on the voice-over, rather than shown, and besides, it usually
isn't what we need to know at all.
Some of the supporting performances in "Rogue
Trader" are laughably over-the-top, but McGregor's is very skilful. Despite
being hopelessly miscast as little Nicky, he still manages to convince us,
although that doesn't save the film -- Leeson is an odious character in a
movie that tries to gloss him over, and not by giving him a personality,
but with superficial smoke-and-mirror techniques. One critic, in a positive
review of "Rogue Trader", described it as "like 'Wall Street' on acid". The
observation may be correct, but "Wall Street" didn't need any
acid.
COPYRIGHT© 1999 Ian
Waldron-Mantgani
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