Boiler Room

A life spent mostly in eclectic, unprofitable pursuits has insulated me from anyone greedy enough to be dangerous. So this cautionary tale of fledgling stockbroker Seth Davis (Giovanni Ribisi), who falls in with a bunch of outrageously amoral, profiteering swindlers, holds a certain morbid fascination, like watching scorpions eat their young on "Animal Planet."

A college dropout chided by his domineering father to give up running back-door card games to former classmates, Seth accepts an invitation to train as a broker with a suspiciously remote company no one's ever heard of. Dropped into a fiercely competitive, testosterone-charged environment that resembles "a Hitler Youth rally," he must either develop a killer telephone-sales spiel or crawl home in defeat.

It turns out Seth has a gift for avaricious gab, and is on his way to making a promised first million within three years even though he can't find out anything about the companies whose stocks he's shilling. When curiosity finally gets the better of him and he discovers it's all a colossal scam, we'll find out if he's really holstered his conscience for the sake of filthy lucre.

This first film from writer/director Ben Younger is based on some of his experiences while trying to keep from starving as a fledgling moviemaker. Borrowing and quoting heavily from Wall Street (whose dialogue Seth's carnivorous buddies, played by Ben Affleck, Vin Diesel, Nicky Katt, and Tom Everett Scott, quote like a mantra), Boiler Room aims to be a youthmarket reiteration of the same statement; Younger states he was astonished by the number of teenage aspiring millionaires encountered during his brief tenure in similar circumstances. As such, the atmosphere feels right, but the peripheral details -- Seth's overwrought relationship with his father, his infrequently glimpsed romance with a company secretary (Nia Long), stratospheric profanity levels (Stockface), and a rap-heavy soundtrack that makes me wonder if we are supposed to equate rap with greed -- are more distracting than edifying.

Glengarry GenX it ain't. C

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