Who payed the critics

That was an excellent one.

Disturbing yet enthralling

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

After providing a promising start it failed to grab the full attention of viewer and has a common ending that can be very predictable even if you are an average movie watcher. Acting is good by both actors but there are a lot of unrealistic scenes which will let you think " you need nothing to be there in a live program and put the whole damn crew of a well known channel into a hostage situation " Definitely a big question mark on George Clooney movie !

Only in hollywood would they make a movie where a guy holding hostage with gun and bomb is a victim. And this guy was clever enough to walk pass security but yet dumb enough to be detected wondering around on air with no clue? And before he put the bomb vest on to Clooney, no one could tackle him? There were like 5 other camera men and Clooney!

Classic Hollywood movie. I only put one star for my favorite actor Jack O'Connell that was great in his small role. This movie show us three specific things: people of television and media are good, police is good, and everyday life will continue to flow even if the system is entirely corrupted. I felt all the time that the film has not a bright or correct message about society or political issues. Also some Illuminati signs may indicate something about people on power, money and our global future. In the end, the "bad" guy said he was wrong, and the "good" guy took the shot.

George Clooney plays one of those financial news network know-it-alls, rolling up his sleeves and getting to work upping his predictions about some stocks and damning others. He's self centered and petty. He wears costumes and does the macarena at the introduction to his show, which is shot on a New York set full of elaborate displays of electronic junk. Julia Roberts, the show's director, is in the control room behind a glass panel, providing the voice in his ear. Then, during one routine but colorful show, Jack O'Connell sneaks onto the set, holds everyone at gunpoint and makes Clooney don an explosive vest. O'Connell, an ordinary working stiff from Queens, has lost his life saving investing in a stock that Clooney had pimped and that had then dropped like a plumb line, just like mine always do. O'Connell angrily queries Clooney about the $800 million lost in one day by Ibis Corporation. Well, the situation is tense, I can tell you.The technology was sometimes over my head. There were TV cameras and monitors all over the place and prominent use was made of smart phone like Blackberries and Blueberries and everybody is texting one another and shouting into microphones and making sure their earplugs were properly seated in the external auditory canals and I don't know what all. This sometimes induced a confused state of consciousness but didn't interfere with the essence of the plot. The CEO of Ibis had used a manual override on the algorithm (or "algo") and sneakily caused the stock to drop after shorting it. Something like that, anyway. Clooney, having just found this out, accuses the CEO of fraud. But is it? It sounds more like larceny of some sort, or maybe embezzlement. No matter.It was directed by Jodie Foster, who is smart and who knows her way around cameras. She does a decent enough job but the details of the script are torturous and sometimes you can get lost in them. Who's shouting to whom around here? And how in the name of Bog could she have let O'Connell get away with waving that pistol around so wildly -- and holding it sideways, something that became a cliché many years ago. It made me wince.Clooney is fine, as usual. He's a pretty good actor. There are a plethora of stars that play action scenes impassively, but when Clooney is batted around the set or has a pistol shoved in his face he looks genuinely scared. Have you ever seen (or imagined) Clint Eastwood or Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sylvester Stallone look truly scared? No? I thought not. The best they can do when threatened with lethal force is look mildly annoyed.Julia Roberts is Julia Roberts, looking no less good without ten layers of iridescent make up. Caitriona Balfe is just fine as Ibis's PR person, formally known as a chief communications officer. She's very sexy and she's Irish. But I felt sorry for the aggrieved Jack O'Connell. He overacts wildly, uses a fake New York City accent (he's Irish too), and has some sort of speech impediment, causing him to deliver a pale simulacrum of his most passionate lines. At the same time, he certainly LOOKS the part of the washed out urban loser.All together, not a bad movie but not a particularly well-done movie either -- not even a glimpse of Maria Bartiromo. Better to have to sit through "Money Monster" than to have invested in Lucent Technology.