These are tough times for the “1 percent.” The economy still sucks, their presidential candidate keeps putting his foot in his mouth, and even Richard Gere, with his movie-star looks and charm, can’t portray one of them and garner much sympathy.
In Arbitrage, Gere is Robert Miller, a Wall Street hedge-fund magnate whose world begins to crumble when a bad investment — in a Russian copper mine, of all things — leads him to commit fraud during negotiations for his trading empire. Miller’s personal life is even messier: A car accident ends badly for his mistress, and when he attempts to cover it up, Miller draws the attention of a New York cop (Tim Roth) who has no love for “masters of the universe.”
What follows is The Bonfire of the Vanities meeting a 1970s episode of Columbo, but without much suspense. Arbitrage is slick, smart … and unsatisfying. It’s a curiously flat movie, always interesting but lacking tension. Susan Sarandon and Brit Marling, as Miller’s wife and daughter, are on hand, I suppose, to engender sympathy for Miller’s embattled family life. But it’s difficult to care much about the fate of people who rely so heavily on wealth for their self-esteem:
Says one character whom Miller enlists to help fool the cops: “You think money’s gonna fix this?”
Miller: “What else is there?”
As a viewer, I wanted some sort of resolution to this game of cat-and-mouse between Miller and the police. Either the bad guy should win or the good guys should win. That might not reflect reality, but it would make for a better movie. Grade: B-
Director: Nicholas Jarecki Cast: Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon, Tim Roth, Brit Marling, Laetitia Casta, Nate Parker, Stuart Margolin, Chris Eigeman, Graydon Carter Release: 2012
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