Michael Douglas has inhabited the role of Gordon Gecko since Oliver Stone's Wall Street premiered in 1987. Douglas, already firmly established as an "A" list actor, didn't need a career turn, but got one anyway as Gecko, generating enough momentum to carry him 23 years, reprising this character once more in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.

In those intervening two decades, the stock market itself provided the perfect storyline, demonstrating exactly how personalities like Gecko helped steer capitalism to the wreckage we see now. And so, the story picks up as Gecko is being released from Federal prison, genuinely weathered, sporting a sheepdog hairdo, having served eight years for insider trading and other "greed is good" offenses. Meanwhile, his estranged daughter (Carey Mulligan) has grown up and is engaged to a young would-be trader, Jacob, played by the lithe Shia LaBeouf.

Eight years behind bars have given Gordon Gecko time to think, and write a book, which he hawks in front of an eager college audience, and a speech that sets the tone for the plot twists to come, and this is one factor that makes this a strong film, because forces are now at work that were not in play when the Gecko of the 1980s relentlessly sought to bring down whoever stood in the way of his corporate raiding. This is a superb screenplay, and should unfold before you in a most satisfying manner, and in the process, explains much of the recent history of the financial sector of this nation.

You will also see brief cameos by Charlie Sheen as Bud Fox, and Sylvia Miles as the same real estate maven she played in the original, having evolved from the blond broad she was then into something akin to a wealthy hippie bag lady in this film . . . and these are continuances of this entire storyline that I love. It is obvious that Director Stone has held this story close to his heart all these 23 years, and he has extended it into the present with even greater skill and aplomb. And there is also the 95 year old Eli Wallach, who, in this film, plays the wizened banker who still calls the shots at his firm. This was especially satisfying, after having just watched The Misfits from 1960, in which Wallach, 50 years younger, makes a play for Marilyn Monroe, behind Clark Gable's back.

And there is Susan Sarandon, always at peak form, who plays Jacob's mother, stopping by from time to time to borrow a few million dollars from her son to patch up her ever-hemorrhaging real estate investments.