CAPSULE: Money Monster (2016, Dir. Jodie Foster)

There must be an insane amount of goodwill out there for Jodie Foster, as an industry luminary, for her to have pulled the big names she has for her second directorial effort, the zeitgeist grasping Money Monster. George Clooney, Julia Roberts and pre-eminent up-and-comer, Jack O'Connell, are the meat in the sandwich of this '90s siege thriller throwback, but star power is not enough to paper over the film's undisciplined approach to its subject.

Lodged somewhere between formulaic bomb scarer (Blown Away) and satire on social apathy in the face of media and Wall St bombardment (Network), Money Monster struggles to find its footing. On both counts it slips and the middle-ground is less than inspiring.

Despite the life and death situation, which sees Clooney's egotistical TV finance schlock-jock, Lee Gates, face off against O'Connell's disgruntled tip-taker live on air, tension levels barely waver. Antagonists are expected to be points of danger and empathy. Victims, are complicit but charismatic. Even Roberts soothing from the sidelines can't even out the fumbling thematics.

Off the back of a weak script (delivered by a diverse committee of industry longtermers), Foster is left wallowing with little in her arsenal beyond her stalwart leads. The look of the film is swallowed by TV tackiness, the characters pulled to and fro serving their dual purposes, and the messaging, which eventually reduces its presumed anger down to a shifty business deal cover-up, fails to ignite outrage.

Money Monster would present that as an end in itself, but better representations of big business swindling with bigger casts have been far more effective in riling audiences recently (Hello The Big Short), so Foster's efforts appear as apathetic as the audience she's attempting to skewer.

★★

Trailer: