The recent theatrical release Groove was partially funded by a San Francisco skateboarder in his early twenties, a kid who dropped $75 000 like it was chump change and sealed the deal with lunch at McDonald's. The young man got rich quick investing his savings in dot-com companies, and many others his age, since 1998 or so, have walked similar paths. Boiler Room is about the money hunger of the hip generation, and though it focuses on the selling end of the spectrum, it deserves credit for being the only movie thus far to explore our current, Internet-influenced financial climate, which makes millionaires out of punks daily. As a cautionary tale laced with domestic tension, I very much enjoyed it.

Told in flashback, perhaps needlessly so, Boiler Room follows Seth Davis (Giovanni Ribisi) as he attempts to go legit by abandoning his illegal neighbourhood casino for a trainee position with Long Island brokerage house JT Marlin--a bid for respect from his stern, disappointed father (Ron Rifkin), a judge. Seth quickly rises through the ranks but makes two mistakes along the way: getting involved with his boss' ex-girlfriend, Abbie (Nia Long), and snooping around the office after dark. What he discovers about the company seriously challenges his scruples.

Boiler Room has a misogynistic (and, by extension, homophobic) bent that smacks of authenticity. "Don't pitch the bitch," Seth is warned by his supervisor, as women will ostensibly nag and nag and nag regarding the temperature of their stocks. The filmmakers equate greed not only with youth but also with old-school masculinity, suggesting that streetwise Seth can't hack high-pressured thievery because he's too sensitive to his own emotional needs. Even Seth's father thinks he's too soft; when they meet for coffee to discuss their "relationship," Dad snaps, "What are we, dating?"

The runty cast (save hulky Vin Diesel (Pitch Black), playing another raw-voiced giant) demonstrates effectively how market success has essentially replaced the fitness craze of a few years back as the key to feeling secure, the irony being that machismo has become feminized to the point where these power mongers gossip in the backroom over a co-worker's style of dress and other surface stuff. Other than Seth, we never see these men with girlfriends. After all, they have each other.

I take exception to a few of Boiler Room's plot points, starting with the fact that everybody seems to know JT Marlin is a chop shop (that is, fake or worthless stock is traded at huge returns) except, conveniently, Seth (at first) and those he randomly solicits over the telephone. Additionally, while I appreciate the idol worship Seth's co-workers have for Wall Street's Gordon Gecko and Alec Baldwin's character from Glengarry Glen Ross, the frequent references to those films provide debut writer-director Ben Younger too many developmental short-cuts and, damagingly, throw the unoriginal elements of Boiler Room's premise into relief.

Such tributes do nothing to dampen the film's vibrant topicality, however, and Younger boldly incorporates a father-son subplot into a story with seemingly little room for it that really resonates. Rifkin, as an unremitting but never cartoonish blowhard, turns tough love into a delicious workshop exercise that brings out the best in Ribisi, who at last achieves a tender vulnerability that isn't tainted by goofball detachment. It's taken Ribisi some time to fulfill the promise of his role as the medic in Saving Private Ryan, but he really scores here.

Boiler Room is expectedly great DVD fare from New Line Home Video. The 16x9-enhanced, 1.85:1 letterboxed image sometimes flickers with inconsistent contrast, but warrants no additional negative comments. Slight grain enhances the film-like presentation, and the colour scheme (desaturated blues for "the boiler room," unaltered shades elsewhere) is exceptionally true to cinematographer Enrique Chediak's intent. Other studios have been known to monkey with a D.P.'s quirky approach in the telecine suite, fearing the wrath of ignorant viewers. Not New Line.

The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio is subtly detailed, with the surrounds helping to create a full 360-degree soundfield that all but transplants us inside the title location. Ringing phones, fleeting background conversation, shuffling papers--the rears are constantly active, and aggressively split when Seth is hustling. Another moment of note is between Seth and Abbie at a pier (chapter 26), with the New York harbour coming to life around us, though not overwhelmingly so. A rap score, compiled by a musician who calls herself "The Angel," gets the LFE pumping out deep bass.

Two supplemental tracks are included, one a commentary by Younger, producer Jennifer Todd, Ribisi and, once in a while, The Angel, the other an isolated score with bridging explanations by The Angel alone. Ribisi's contribution, edited in after the fact and less screen-specific than Younger and Todd's, is surprisingly candid and articulate (how many It Boy actors can use "prurient" in a sentence?). Younger is actually paired with talkative Todd; I wish these two had explored, instead of merely touching upon, how it is that a first-time helmer gets a studio movie produced by the team behind Austin Powers and co-starring "Academy Award Winner" Ben Affleck. Still, it was interesting to learn that much of the film's dialogue and incidents were culled directly from Younger's extensive research, giving the lie to Boiler Room's opening disclaimer (the "any similarities...are purely coincidental" tag that normally comes at the end of a film).

Five deleted scenes add layers to our knowledge of the final product. One over-the-top sequence involves the entire staff of JT Marlin preparing to gangbang two prostitutes, underlining the company's disregard for women but in a manner that rendered the employees far more barbaric than was necessary. The original ending has some things going for it, as well, but it was not a crowd-pleaser the way its replacement is. The theatrical trailer (5.1, 16x9-enhanced), cast and crew bios, and DVD-ROM content (the script, a quiz, and the official website) bring this package to a boil.-Bill Chambers

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DVD VITALS:
Running Time
117 minutes
MPAA
R
Aspect Ratio(s)
1.85:1 ONLY, 16x9-enhanced
Languages
English DD 5.1,
English Dolby Surround
CC
Yes
Subtitles
English
DVD-9
Region One
New Line

the critic

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Published: July, 2000