Michael Douglas returns as Gordon Gekko the smooth, slithering money magnet of Oliver Stone’s 1987 Wall Street. But he has fallen from grace, and after a stint in prison, gone a little soft.

But as many immortal silver-screen icons will testify, time hasn’t bit his tongue or dimmed his eyes. As he points out to a young Jake Moore (Shia LeBeouf): “A fisherman always sees other fisherman from far.”

LeBeouf is not a step-in for Charlie Sheen’s Bud Fox. He’s a breed of the newer generation: more confident, more mature. He’s a little hot-headed egoistic but he’s also a good, decent, guy. In Wall Street 2, Stone grounds LeBouf in non-fiction seriousness.

Jake is the fast-rising stock trader and idealistic supporter of alternative energy projects which no one wants to hear about. He is also the boyfriend of Gekko’s estranged daughter Winnie (Carey Mulliganand). It is as much about Jake as it is about Gekko or his daughter.

And it is about the light and entertaining look at present day money game and the moral dilemma that walk side by side with the characters. Unlike other motion pictures, Wall Street 2 is never in your face, nor is it so overpowering that it hijacks other elements of the film like “greed”, which Gekko states “is legal now”.

As it happens, everyone now knows, by default programming, that “Greed is Good” — which incidentally is the title of the book Gekko writes when he comes out of jail, penniless.

One look at the timely abstract transitions and blinking Dow Jones figures that cover the Gotham skyline (part of the cut-special effects Stone uses kinetically in the film) and you know that Stone has created a miniature masterpiece with all the traits of classic Hollywood fables.

Wall Street 2 is idealistic in nature, and so Stone softens the film’s blows by telling a realistic, concrete story, rather than just wagging the finger or being angry (after all there are $70 million in production budget at stake here, one cannot afford being angry). — Farheen Jawaid