Variety
Equity
By Guy Lodge

attends the “Equity” Premiere during the 2016 Sundance Film Festival at Library Center Theater on January 26, 2016 in Park City, Utah.

If “The Wolf of Wall Street” took flak in some quarters for complicitly reveling in the glossy moral bankruptcy of its otherwise loaded brokers, the same accusation is unlikely to be leveled against “Equity.” Meera Menon’s refreshingly female-skewed financial thriller proves that the women of Wall Street can be just as cold-heartedly corrupt as the boys, but most viewers won’t be remotely seduced by the pitiless pressure-cooker environment its drawn-faced characters inhabit. Yet while the severity of the film’s environment convinces, the specifics of Amy Fox’s screenplay — tangled up in tech IPOs, post-Snowden security paranoia and venal investment banking practice — are less consistently persuasive. Snapped up by Sony Classics prior to its Sundance premiere, Menon’s film has a strong marketing hook in its more-novel-than-it-should-be gender purview; it may, however, find VOD a more bullish market. Read More