Maybe the problem was that there is such a plethora of information out there with so much having been committed by so many that his attempt to encapsulate everything in a single film ends up missing the mark by a mile in its scatter-gun approach. This movie wanders all over the map with writers Allan Loeb and Stephen Schiff taking mostly legitimate potshots at some of the excesses of the last 10 years which led to the 2008 financial collapse. Credit default swaps and other financial derivatives come in for heavy criticism without proper explanation with the result that even reasonably sophisticated viewers like myself are lost in a fog since it is so hard to understand what they are. Furthermore, it is almost impossible to show numbers going across a screen in any way that would make them interesting.

Regrettably, nothing is explained about the origin of credit default swaps or any other of the complex financial derivatives, and no blame is placed for the financial excesses outside of the easy target of the Wall Street trading houses, many of which, hard to believe, were also ignorant conduits and even highly leveraged owners of this toxic financial waste. For a while it seemed that greed really was good. 

When Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) gets out of prison after serving his eight year sentence, he finds that little has changed on a Wall Street still filled with ambitious young guns hustling to take on the titans of the industry at their own game. Like Michael Douglas himself, though, this film is older, somewhat wiser, and a lot sadder as he comes out of prison only to discover that no one is waiting for him. The lecture circuit proves to be his only profitable venue after writing a book about his experiences.  

The infamous phrase uttered in 1987 by Gordon Gekko, "Greed is good," passed into the lexicon as symbolizing that post Ivan Boesky era. It turns out, as Gekko wryly observes, that greed is now legitimate and he sees a market bubble, or bubbles, in the making similar to the famous Dutch tulip bulb scandal of 1637 well before the market collapse in 2008. 

It is at one of his lectures that Jake Moore (Shia LaBeouf) catches his attention by telling Gekko that he is engaged to his estranged daughter, Winnie Gekko (Carey Mulligan). Jake is a rising star at a boutique financial firm headed by Louis Zabel (Frank Langella), who has mentored Jake for some time. Now Zabel is tired and confused, as well he should be, for Keller Zabel (modeled after Lehman Brothers) is on the verge of collapse. Zabel proudly gives Jake his year-end bonus check of $1.4 million dollars and tells him to invest it and make Winnie happy. 

Days later Louis Zabel is called to account at the New York Fed where he sees the cards stacked against him, and Bretton James (Josh Brolin), the head of a rival firm partially modeled after Goldman Sachs, holding the aces that he used to hold. Faced with the imminent collapse of his firm and the loss of his reputation, Zabel commits suicide, an event that horrifies Jake and inspires him to seek revenge. 

Meanwhile Gordon Gekko is using Jake in an attempt to reconcile with his daughter, so Jake is now a frequent visitor to Gekko's small high rise office. (The son referred to in the earlier movie was Winnie's  older brother, and he is now dead after a drug overdose.) Gekko passes on the rumor that Bretton James was instrumental in the collapse of Keller Zabel  and also rumors that a great amount of short selling of the stock came from an offshore firm that Gekko suspects might mask illegal trading by Bretton James. This news inspires the now unemployed Jake to cozy up to James for a new career to see if he can't destroy him from the inside. 133 minutes and rated PG-13 for brief strong language and thematic elements.