Ticket to the Movies: ‘Barbarians at the Gate’ tells a Wall Street tale of greed

FloridaGator80

Welcome back to my blog. Here’s my recommendation of a movie to check out today and hope you punch your “Ticket to the Movies!” OK, let’s switch gears today and go with the docu-drama (read: “based on” story) about Wall Street shenanigans titled “Barbarians at the Gate” with James Garner, Jonathan Pryce and Peter Reigert.

“Barbarians at the Gate” is the story of when the CEO of then-titled RJR-Nabisco moved to take the publicly-traded company private via a leveraged buyout at the time of “junk bonds” and accomplished with enough backstabbing and corporate skullduggery that would impress denizens of Wall Street today. Garner does a wonderful job in portraying the real-life chief executive F. Ross Johnson, who was Canadian-born and died at 85 in 2016.

“Barbarians at the Gate” was an early effort from HBO, which was at the vanguard of breaking Hollywood’s traditional “studio” system with independent movies made for initial broadcast on tee-vee “movie networks” instead of being released in theaters. These films, such as HBO’s “The Late Shift” about the feud between Jay Leno and David Letterman in which would take the late-night talk-show mantle of retiring superstar Johnny Carson, would prove a studio wouldn’t be the only entity to produce quality motion pictures.

In “Barbarians at the Gate,” Garner does a wonderful job as the colorful, affable, single-minded executive who gets caught up in something that becomes much larger than himself. Pryce plays so-called private equity specialist Henry Kravis and is a shark excited by the blood, err … money, in the water. Garner decides to take the company public after discovering the company’s new “smokeless” cigarette was gonna be an economic bust and he needed money for the buyout.

Especially funny is the scene in RJ Reynolds’ laboratory (R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. was the “RJ” portion of RJR-Nabisco after a merger in 1985) when Garner finds out the truth about the “smokeless” cigarette. His mildly profane rant (“mildly” by today’s lack of any standards) is simply hilarious and he wends his affable way through corporate greed and excess with charm and verve.

So, I say punch your “Ticket to the Movies!” and watch “Barbarians at the Gate.” It is available primarily on Max (formerly HBO Max), but also for rent on a few other streaming services. So, find it! Watch it! Don’t worry, you’ll thank me later for “Barbarians at the Gate.” Yes, you will!

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