This movie reminds all of us of something that most of all already know. When you are on Wall Street and responsible for millions if not billions of dollars that could be made or lost, the stress and pressure of a job like this is overwhelming. If you are successful, you will make millions of dollars, but the cost of this kind of success and money is high. Many long hours, titanic amounts of dangerous stress and anger and having to fend off many other people who are trying to knock you down and backstab you and take your high paying job away from you, something I have experienced first hand in the corporate world. We all know that high level of stress is about as dangerous to your health than anything and with the stress of high paying jobs like the ones depicted in the new film “Equity” you will pay a huge price for the money and success you may receive. The question really is, “what amount of money is worth your health and maybe even taking years off of your life?”

Anna Gunn is the lead actor in this movie and according to IMDB this is the first starring role in a movie she has had since the end of Breaking Bad in 2014, arguably the greatest television drama series of all time. Gunn is very effective playing a hard driving Wall Street executive whose job it is to handle IPO’s (Initial Public Offerings) for new companies that decide to go public. All IPO’s on Wall Street involve many millions and in some cases billions of dollars, which adds to the stress and pressure all the people behind the IPO are under for months before the stock is released to the public. If things go well, the initial investors in these companies make a great deal of money. If things go wrong, then investors lose millions of dollars and careers are lost.

The story behind this movie is a very good one that essentially boils down to some very bad people and a ton of greed. In the corporate world of money, there seems no measurable lower limit when it comes to how bad people will be to get ahead.

This movie is a very good representation of Wall Street and corporate greed and I recommend​ this film. The screenwriter Amy Fox, seems to be a newcomer and I thought the story and dialogue in this movie were outstanding.

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While watching this very good movie I kept thinking that it was high time an idea like this was turned into a film. Most stories coming out of Hollywood are the success stories of the lucky few who make it and with the happy ending but that is not real life. Real life is about the tens of thousands who want to break into an extremely difficult field as fickle and cruel as show business and those who try their whole lives and never get the break they deserve even though they are very talented. People who are cursed with the “show business bug” very often work in horrible depressing menial jobs during the day in the hopes that they will be discovered at night at some comedy club or at some improvisation group, which is the premise of this movie. During this film, there are several improv sketches performed by the comedy group that comprises the cast of this movie and I thought just about all of them were very well done even though they all started by asking the audience the same question, “Did anyone have a bad day today”?

This film follows a group of friends who have started their own comedy group in the hopes of being discovered by a weekend show that is equivalent to Saturday Night Live. One of the friends of the cast, played by Keegan Micheal-Kay is discovered and as a result of this most of the rest of the cast become jealous which is a major part of the struggle to be one of the lucky few in show business; extreme jealousy for the very few who make it. Keegan’s experience with this Saturday Night show proved that even if you make it or think you have made it, you still have to deal with the cruel comments of people who are in charge and anoint themselves the judge and jury over other people. Insecurity and fear is a major part of performing, most especially comedy and you have to have respect for anyone who would even try to make a group of people laugh in front of any kind of an audience. The actress Gillan Jacob’s does a very believable job as a comedian in the improv group and plays Keegan’s girlfriend and they face several relationship problems as Keegan’s character gets on that Saturday Night Show and she is too afraid to audition. One of the other members of the group is Mike Birbiglia​ who also wrote and directed this very solid film.

I highly recommend “Don’t​ Think Twice”.

So why did producers in Hollywood decide to remake a great classic movie that originally came out in 1959? This one is easy, its all about name recognition and making money. The producers of this movie knew that most people have at least heard of Ben Hur, even if they never saw the original movie. So they thought that they would have a guaranteed level of box office because people have heard the name, Ben Hur. According to IMDB, the movie cost over 100 million dollars to make but for the opening weekend it only made 11 million. We all know that this movie will not be in the theaters for 10 weeks so odds are high this film will lose money. The problem is that the original movie is an all time movie classic that was 3 hours long, but this movie is a pale imitation of the original and only 2 hours long. The only thing worth seeing in this 2 hours is the chariot race at the end, which is better in this movie because of the technical abilities that are available now with computer effects that were not available in 1959. In the end, what makes money and what is worth going to the​ movies is a great original​ story and most ideas like this one will fail. People normally do not like remakes of classic movies even with the addition of a well-known​ movie star like Morgan Freeman, who is not nearly enough of a presence to rescue​ this film. On top of this the scenes that had to remove to reduce this film to 2 hours were some of the best scenes of the first movie. Another big mistake.

If you have not seen the original Ben Hur that came out in 1959 you should see that great movie and miss this one entirely. I would recommend trying to find the Chariot Race on YOUTUBE for this new movie.