Bailout: The Age of Greed aka Assault on Wall Street (2013)

(On Cable TV, February 2014) Writer/Director Uwe Boll may be one of the most reviled filmmakers around, but wow is his latest Assault on Wall Street a fascinating piece of work. Few movies commit as completely to sheer populist outrage, and in selecting Wall Street as a target for a cheap exploitation film, Boll seems far more adept at reading the cultural zeitgeist than in more Hollywoodized products such as Tower Heist. From the get-go, the plot screws have the ring of the time: A protagonist stuck between crippling medical bills and life savings frittered away by financial shenanigans vows vengeance when he loses everything. The titular assault not only succeeds, but goes unpunished and even celebrated in a bit of epilogue narration. Hollywood is never this transgressive, and that makes Assault on Wall Street worth a look even if the film itself never rises above straight-to-video quality levels. There really isn’t much to say about the acting, directing or cinematography when compared to the sheer chutzpah of the script. Taking a break from more fantastical video-game premises suits Boll well: maybe he should consider that as a future career path. Who knows –he may end up doing something more than half-way respectable one of those days.