Seth Davis is a talented hustler who gives up his successful undergound
casino for a job at a brokerage firm. He's lured by the opportunity
to go legitimate and become a millionaire in his early twenties.
The money is real, but the legitimacy part isn't. The work at
the firm is really the ultimate in high pressure sales, where
the customers are conned into investing large sums of their money
in bogus stocks.
"Boiler Room" has the kind of hip edge and fast pacing we've come to expect in a crime drama, but there's some substance to go along with all that style. Writer/director Ben Younger wrote the script based on his actual experience at a recruiting session, and subsequent exhaustive research into the bogus firms known as boiler rooms. In other words, they're not making this stuff up...
Crowds of fraternal white male twentysomethings with enormous egos and minute consciences, flaunting their Italian suits and their $200 000 cars and spoiling for a fight. It's hard to watch. There were more than a few scenes where it occurred to me, where's 200 gallons of napalm, just when you really need it? But they're real and they're out there, so we might as well deal with it. Better by far on screen than in person, says I.
Giovanni Ribisi is excellent as Seth Davis, the new rising star who is tormented by his conscience and his busted relationship with his judgmental father. The rest of the cast is also super. The film preserves as much humanity as is feasible with a group of characters that, in real life, don't have much to spare. Fellow "Saving Private Ryan" mate Vin Diesel is an almost likable senior broker who takes Seth under his wing, and Ben Affleck. has a minor but very blunt role as the floor manager.
In a nutshell: "Boiler Room" is a very good film that will enlighten you about a phenomenon that up until now was a very well-kept secret.