The film tells the story of Bud Fox (C. Sheen), a young stockbroker who becomes involved with Gordon Gekko (Douglas), a wealthy, unscrupulous corporate raider.
The character of Gekko is said to be a composite of several people, including Dennis Levine, Ivan Boesky, Carl Icahn, Asher Edelman, Michael Milken, and Stone himself.
Desperate, Bud provides him some inside information about Bluestar Airlines, which he has learned in a casual conversation with his father, Carl, leader of the company's maintenance workers' union.
Although this would leave Bud a very rich man, he is angered by Gekko's deceit and wracked with guilt for being an accessory to Bluestar's impending destruction, especially after his father suffers a heart attack.
Bud and the union presidents secretly meet with Wildman and arrange for him to buy the stock and a controlling interest in Bluestar, at a significant discount, on the condition that he saves the company.
After the success of Platoon (1986), Stone wanted film school friend and Los Angeles screenwriter Stanley Weiser to research and write a screenplay about quiz show scandals in the 1950s.
The director pitched the premise of two investment partners getting involved in questionable financial dealings, using each other, and they are tailed by a prosecutor as in Crime and Punishment.
Stone remembers that the "story frames what happens in my movie, which is basically a Pilgrim's Progress of a boy who is seduced and corrupted by the allure of easy money.
[4] Reportedly, Gordon Gekko is said to be a composite of several people: Wall Street broker Owen Morrisey, an old friend of Stone's[6] who was involved in a $20 million insider trading scandal in 1985, Dennis Levine, Ivan Boesky,[7] corporate raider Carl Icahn, investor and art collector Asher Edelman, agent Michael Ovitz, and Stone himself.
[4] Stone remembers, "I was warned by everyone in Hollywood that Michael couldn't act, that he was a producer more than an actor and would spend all his time in his trailer on the phone".
[12] Stone cast Daryl Hannah as Bud Fox's materialistic girlfriend Darien Taylor, but felt that she was never happy with the role and did not know why she accepted it.
[4] The director saw [Wall Street] as a battle zone and "filmed it as such" including shooting conversations like physical confrontations, and in ensemble shots had the camera circle the actors "in a way that makes you feel you're in a pool with sharks".
Kenneth Lipper, investment banker and former deputy mayor of New York for Finance and Economic Development, was also hired as chief technical adviser.
Lipper brought a balance to the film and this helped Stone get permission to shoot on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange during trading hours.
Stone shot a scene showing the honest Mannheim giving in to insider trading, but Lipper argued that audiences might conclude that everyone on Wall Street is corrupt and insisted that the film needed an unimpeachable character.
[19] Stone also consulted with Carl Icahn, Asher Edelman, convicted inside trader David Brown, several government prosecutors, and Wall Street investment bankers.
[19] Stone asked Lipper to design a six-week course that would expose Charlie Sheen to a cross section of young Wall Street business people.
[24] Wall Street defines itself through a number of morality conflicts putting wealth and power against simplicity and honesty,[25][26] and an attack on the value system of extreme competitiveness where ethics and the law are simply irrelevant parts of the show.
[27] Carl (Martin Sheen's character) represents the working class in the film: he is the union leader for the maintenance workers at Bluestar.
The conflict between Gekko's relentless pursuit of wealth and Carl Fox's leftward leanings form the basis of the film's subtext.
Stone uses this scene to give Gekko, and by extension, the Wall Street raiders he personifies, the chance to justify their actions, portraying himself as a liberator of the company value from the ineffective and excessively compensated executives.
The consensus reads, "With Wall Street, Oliver Stone delivers a blunt but effective—and thoroughly well-acted—jeremiad against its era's veneration of greed as a means to its own end.
[32] In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby, while quite critical of the film overall, praised Douglas' work as "the funniest, canniest performance of his career".
[33] Roger Ebert gave the film three and a half stars out of four and praised it for allowing "all the financial wheeling and dealing to seem complicated and convincing, and yet always have it make sense.
[35] In his review for The Globe and Mail, Jay Scott praised the performances of the two leads: "But Douglas's portrayal of Gordon Gekko is an oily triumph and as the kid Gekko thinks he has found in Fox ('Poor, smart and hungry; no feelings'), Charlie Sheen evolves persuasively from gung-ho capitalist child to wily adolescent corporate raider to morally appalled adult".
Mormani, writing for The Objective Standard, calls the film "mixed", explaining that it "accurately portray[s] some aspects of the financial profession and unjustly demonizing it, too.
"[38] Michael Douglas won the Academy Award for Best Actor and thanked Oliver Stone for "casting me in a part that almost nobody thought I could play".
[39] However, Daryl Hannah's performance was not as well received and earned her a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Supporting Actress, thus making this the only film to date to win both an Oscar and a Razzie.
New extras include an on-camera introduction by Stone, extensive deleted scenes, "Greed is Good" featurettes, and interviews with Michael Douglas and Martin Sheen.
[43] In reviewing the film's sequel 23 years later, Variety noted that though the original film was "intended as a cautionary tale on the pitfalls of unchecked ambition and greed, Stone's 1987 original instead had the effect of turning Douglas' hugely charismatic (and Oscar-winning) villain into a household name and boardroom icon – an inspiration to the very power players and Wall Street wannabes for whom he set such a terrible example.