Arbitrage or Wall Street

Caught Arbitrage this last weekend on netflix and must say the old guy (Richard Gere) still has it in him. Don't know many people who can look so good portraying a 60 year old. Arbitrage essentially means hedging your risks plus some, as in not only do you hedge your risks you actually end up making some money in the process. The title is symbolic of how the businessman is managing his life itself. The film reminded me of Michael Douglas' Wall Street. Except that Arbitrage had a lot more to do with Wall Street that Wall Street itself. I always related Gere to this romantic hero and this is was his most anti avataar of himself. Gere plays a hedge fund magnate who has dipped into his investor funds and made some bad personal investments, of course, he did not know they were bad when making them. This leaves him with a hole of about 400 mill dollars in his investor funds which he covers up by taking a loan from a friend. His only option now is to sell off his business and fill up the hole with the proceeds.  Shrewd businessman that he is he almost manages to pull off this coup without the regulators or the media getting any wind of it when a blast from the past comes to bite him. The scene where he explains his predicament to the daughter would be my favorite. His desperation at his current situation stopping short of pulling his hair apart looks so realistic that you forget you are watching a guy acting. Plus your heart goes out to him as he handles all the issues in his life one after another, the ones closest to him causing him most anguish, starting from his friend who lend him the money, his daughter hammering him about the mismatch in the numbers, his mistress with whom he shares a passionate affair always complaining about his absence, his wife in her own way, the cops who suspect him of manslaughter, each of them blissfully unaware of any of his other issues.

Wall Street is the story of a hostile takeover businessman who targets companies with hidden assets (read pension funds) and scrap sells them often with drastic effects on the company, its owners and it employees. The character portrayed by Douglas, another great actor, is completely negative. The protagonist of the movie is Charlie Sheen (I think his only serious role to date) who gets caught in Douglas charm and manages to get out just in time, whereas Gere in Arbitrage, in spite of his negative undertones is still the protagonist. 

All in all, I liked Arbitrage better considering the situation is so much more real and likely to happen. Also, the story is told with a personal touch and Gere's acting is flawless. Wall Street seems more like a thriller in comparison though an interesting one but falls one notch short of Arbitrage. I know many people would disagree with me. Lemme know what you think.