# Boiler Room (2000)

### reviewed by
Jon Popick

PLANET SICK-BOY: http://www.sick-boy.com

Welcome to J.T. Marlin, a Long Island stock brokerage that guarantees recruits that they will become millionaires within three years. Although J.T. Marlin is over an hour away from the hustle and bustle of Wall Street, their parking lot is full of expensive, new cars, driven by employees in expensive, new suits. The senior executives are twenty-seven and they know Wall Street by heart.

The allure of the job is certainly understandable – get rich and bond with guys that are just like you. But for Seth Davis (Giovanni Ribisi, The Other Sister), it's also a chance to finally gain the one thing he's never had: His father's respect. All he needs to do is work his ass off and follow J.T. Marlin's few rules. The first is `ABC,' or `Always Be Closing,' an acronym lifted from David Mamet's amazing Glengarry Glen Ross, a similar film with similar subject matter.

Instead of Alec Baldwin spouting these mottos, Boiler Room uses Ben Affleck (Dogma) as its pitchman. He plays Jim Young, a senior manager at the firm in charge of firing up the new recruits (done here in three hysterical scenes). In addition to `ABC,' Jim also teaches the trainees not to `Pitch the Bitch' (sell to women) and to always `Act As If…' (insert whatever phrase you'd please – like `You Own the Company').

Of course, the one rule that the recruits don't learn is that if it seems to good to be true, it usually is. J.T. Marlin sells worthless stock in phony businesses to whomever they can get on the phone. Their tactics are aggressive, manipulative and illegal, but everyone is so busy counting the piles of money that nobody seems to care that they're bilking honest people out of their life savings.

Also serving as the film's narrator, we learn that Seth is different. He doesn't care about the money – his parents are loaded, his dad (Ron Rifkin, The Negotiator) a federal judge. A college dropout that ran a highly profitable casino out of his Queens apartment, Seth takes the job on the advice of childhood friend and J.T. Marlin manager Greg Weinstein (Nicky Katt, The Limey), seeing the new profession as a way to get back in his father's good graces. He spends three months as a trainee, passes the Section 7 exam and becomes one of the firm's better salesmen. But Seth knows a good scam when he sees one and wisely proceeds with caution.

Boiler Room is a very impressive film debut from Ben Younger, who wrote and directed the film after spending over a year interviewing real-life brokers. In a world where it seems everyone is a day-trader and Microsoft secretaries make as much money as professional athletes, the subject matter is hip and topical. He shows the men of Generation X as power-hungry deviants that will do anything to get ahead in life, including ridiculing others for their race, creed, color and sexual preference. They mix in brokerage lingo with their insults, but Younger's script deftly explains the entire process from cold sales call to closing.

The film also looks amazingly accomplished for a first-timer. Younger, cinematographer Enrique Chediak (The Faculty) and editor Chris Peppe (Suicide Kings) do a great job at capturing both the look of the giant, action-packed sales floor of J.T. Marlin, as well as the genuinely gut-wrenching emotion portrayed by Ribisi. The acting is great, and its hip-hop heavy score was produced by The Angel. The only complaint is the presence of the tiresome romantic subplot involving a black secretary (played by Nia Long, The Best Man), which seems thrown in just to offset the objectionable racial material in the film.

1:55 – R for adult language, some sexual content and violence

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