“Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.” So begins a quote from Matt Groening’s School Is Hell comic, a line which may or may not have inspired an exchange between two characters in writer-director Harvey Kahn’s DIY answer to Oliver Stone’s Wall Street. Either way, the dialogue begs to be recapitulated and applied to Christian Slater: “Those who can, act. Those who can’t, produce.”
Slater, The Deal’s executive producer, stars as Tom Hanson, an exec for Delaney & Strong who takes over a merger for Condor Oil & Gas. When he discovers that his client is part of a global conspiracy, he wants to do right by the red, white, and blue in his heart, but his new boss (Robert Loggia) applies some pressure below the belt: If Tom doesn’t close the merger before a certain time, he can say goodbye to his girlfriend, Abbey (Selma Blair).
The material is relevant—America is at war with the Middle East and it’s business as usual below Canal Street—but that’s not to say it’s any good: an NYPD Blue-style montage sequence sets up the hustle and bustle of New York City and the “other” world is represented by countless maps of oil reserves; the oft-seen exterior of Condor Oil & Gas is about as menacing as Donald Trump’s hair; and intrigue comes in the form of Skinemax lovemaking, bad Russian accents, and the lamest car chase in the history of cinema.
As if the film’s allegiance to Wall Street weren’t already apparent, a character references Gordon Gekko—and that’s in addition to a reference to Napoleon and a quote from Julius Caesar. It’s not long into the film before you begin to miss the minimalist political paranoia of The Parallax View and Three Days of the Condor, films that don’t spell out everything for us or appear to have been shot by disgruntled Wall Street execs during a coffee break.
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