If
a company needs money to promote a promising new product,
a bank will ideally provide a bridge loan. If a bank turns
down the loan, one alternative is a junk bond for sale on
the open market and aggressive brokers to find buyers. This
is the premise for Boiler Room, directed by
Ben Younger, who drew from personal experience as an employee
in such a firm to write the script. The film focuses on nineteen-year-old
Seth Davis (played by Giovanni Ribisi), who dropped out of
college but manages to make a living by getting college men
to place bets on blackjack at his apartment in Queens. When
Greg (played by Nicky Katt) visits his operation, he tells
Seth that he could make a lot more money as a stockbroker
at J.T. Marlin. Seth's father (played by Ron Rifkin) is concerned
that his own career as a judge is in potential jeopardy because
Seth is involved in an illegal gambling operation, and he
urges Seth to get a better job. Accordingly, Seth joins J.T.
Marlin, a securities firm of young white males who resemble
horny fraternity boys on the prowl to make a score, except
that the testosterone is sublimated into making ethnic slurs
of competing pitchmen, showing muscle at bars after work,
and milking moneyed white males of their life savings by appealing
to their belief that a friendly voice on the telephone is
opening the gateway to millionairedom. The term "boiler room"
refers to a brokerage house that telemarkets using phones
listed in the yellow pages to find suckers to buy stock or
bonds for huge commissions, driving the price up just high
enough so that the insiders involved in the scam can sell
at a fat profit, whereupon prices fall, and innocent investors
lose their shirts. (Thus, the name of the company refers to
the big fish that the frat boys are supposed to catch.) Seth
turns out to be very successful in pressuring clients over
the phone to buy worthless paper, though he once takes credit
for a sale even before he gets his broker's license. One of
his victims, Harry Reynard (played by Taylor Nichols), loses
an initial small amount but is nevertheless persuaded to invest
(and quickly lose) more than $50,000, the amount set aside
for a down payment on a house, whereupon his wife and two
children walk out on him. Seth is chagrined over the consequences
of his quest for respectability in a firm that he soon surmises
is operating illegally. When Seth tells his father about his
new job, the judge is apoplectic that his son is now ruining
lives, but he suggests a way "not to get caught." Meanwhile,
Seth uses his testosterone to date Abby, J.T. Marlin's African
American $80,000-a-year receptionist (played by Nia Long),
who is forwarding evidence of the scam to FBI agent Drew (played
by Bill Nichols). When Seth is arrested, so is his father,
and Seth agrees to a plea bargain in which he will collect
incriminating evidence. Just before an FBI raid, he asks Michael
(played by Tom Everett Scott), the manager of J.T. Marlin
to return the $50,000 to his unfortunate client, and the film
ends just before the FBI raid. Boiler Room is
an update of Wall Street (1987) and Glengarry
Glenn Ross (1992); indeed, staff at J.T. Marlin quote
from the Wall Street dialogue verbatim during the film. The
rap soundtrack, however, is too faint to provide social commentary,
so socially-aware audiences will doubtless purchase the CD.
A film about the greed of yuppies and those with more money
than investing sense, Boiler Room's tagline
is "Where would you turn? How far would you go? How hard will
you fall?" Boiler room "chop shops" are today a top priority
for the North American Securities Administrators Association
to shut down. In the 1990s, as the stock market was going
ever upward, Boiler Room's immediate message
would have been to caution potential stock market investors
to be wary of telephone solicitations. However, when Boiler
Room opened in mid-February 2000, the stock market
was taking a dramatic plunge, the very time when bargains
were available for the very shrewd. MH
I
want to comment on this film
