Arbitrage

****

Richard Gere plays affluent hedge-fund manager Robert Miller, balancing an apparently thriving business with an idyllic family life – he has everything. But as the drama unfolds, Miller’s glittering billion-dollar existence appears to be no more than a handsome surface for underlying corruption. 

Nicholas Jarecki directs his debut feature with an appropriately brisk, meretricious sheen; it’s slickly put together, just as the central character is, apparently, well put together. Gere gives his best performance – trading on his natural charisma, he manages to cleverly subvert his superficial charm to the point were you can’t help but be drawn into the convoluted web of duplicity. Tim Roth on the other hand plays a detective with deep contempt for the avaricious commercial circle that Gere’s character moves within, but the film ultimately calls into question whether corruption in fact lies on both sides of the same coin.

There are echoes of Gordan Gekko in Robert Miller; Susan Sarandon(playing Gere’s onscreen wife) asks, “how much money do we need?” Just as Bud Fox wanted to know of Gekko what “his number” is...The answer? In this decadent world of high finance, nothing is ever enough. There are other aspects of Oliver Stone’s Wall Street that are drawn upon, such as the ever prescient “greed is good” money corrupts adage, but Jarecki is less interested in the zeitgeist and more absorbed by the drama. And absorbing, it is.