Does Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps reflect the reality of Wall Street?

If you want a movie that is realistic for how Wall Street worked in 2008, watch Margin Call.  What was really cool was that I looked at some of the people there, and they reminded me a lot of people that I knew. Looking at the trailer, Wall Street II looked so unrealistic that I gave it a pass.  This is just from the trailer. 1) There's no way that someone that has just been released from prison for insider trader, would be so high profile.  Wall Street is known for second, third, fourth, or fifth chances, but assuming that Gekko was still allowed to work in the securities business, he would be extremely, extremely low key.  This would probably make for a more interesting movie. 2) The fact that everyone was selling crap to everyone else was pretty well known.  Gekko would have made no friends pointing this out. 3) There's no way in hell, people would stand up on the trading floor and stop work.  I've seen traders ignore fire alarms and keep looking at their computer screens.  Also the television screens on the trading floor are always on mute. 4) The paper check.  No one in Wall Street uses paper checks.  The way your bonus works is that you get called into your bosses office or a conference room, and they hand you a letter, and they talk to you about it.  The money is direct deposited. 5) People that make million dollar bonuses aren't going to be attending the types of events that were in the trailer.  Those are for people that make ten to twenty million dollar bonuses. 6) Helicopters don't take off from Midtown.  There was an accident in the 1960's and since then the Midtown heliport has been on 33rd street, and helicopters don't touch down on buildings in NYC.  Also if you are travelling anywhere nearby, helicopters will likely take you more time than the subway since you will have to get from the helipad to where you are going.  The only people who take helicopters are people that are connected to a jet at an airport, and the main reason for doing that is that you can get checked in before you get on the helicopter. Also the wikipedia summary does not make sense: 1) People just do not commit suicide if they lose control of a company.  Anyone that is CEO level has probably gone through more ups and downs, and if they were to commit suicide over stress it would have happened a lot earlier.  Also if someone kills themselves over some financial deal, people are not going to have particularly great amounts of sympathy or going to be particularly mad at the person that did that deal.  Crap happens, and people deal. 2) Taking $100 million to fund fusion makes no sense, and I'll see it as a borderline scam.  People have been working for decades to do fusion and it's money into a black box.  And $100 million is not nearly enough.  If you wanted something more realistic, $100 million is enough to do something cool in biotech.  Cure Alzeheimers or AIDS. 3) No way that people are going to have anonymous money, and certainly not from Switzerland.  The millisecond anyone figures out that the money came from Gekko, any one that he screwed over is going to be on the phone to Treasury or SEC, and filing lawsuits.  Also the *last* thing that you'd want if you are a convicted felon is to violate anti-money laundering laws or to avoid taxes.  If *anyone* is angry at Gekko, then just call up the local US attorney, and Gekko is going to find himself in a supermax prison for the rest of his life. If you want this to be moderately realistic have Gekko renounce his US  or citizenship and run his empire from Costa Rica or Saint Nevis.

Of course not, movies generally aren't known for capturing reality even with real subject matter. However Oliver Stone took many real events and re-worked them into his story: During the Long Term Capital Management (1998) crisis Bear Stearns failed to participate in the bailout which was noted when they were going under.  Of course, Bear was forced to sell to JP Morgan for $2 (a major deal mistake caused JP Morgan to have to up the price to $10 to guarantee shareholder acceptance).  This was a similar scenario depicted with Churchill Schwartz buying Shia LaBeouf's firm, Keller Zabel, for $2.  In real life, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson pushed for the low price to try to ensure that moral hazard had a cost. Josh Brolin's character was intended to physically resemble Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan but the firm was modeled on Goldman Sachs.  JP Morgan and Jamie Dimon exited the crisis more respected, not less. The meetings depicted where the banks met with government officials (NY Fed, Federal Reserve, and Treasury) happened many times during the meltdown on the weekends. Churchill Schwartz was loosely modeled on Goldman Sachs.  In the movie, Churchill Schwartz, like the real Goldman Sachs, profited by packaging assets they knew would fail and also betting against their clients on the other side of the trade. Some Wall Street firms did move up their bonuses to maximize what their bankers and traders would get despite very large losses (like Merryll Lynch before being absorbed into Bank of America to avoid failing).  In the movie, Shia LaBeouf is surprised about the timing of his bonus.  In fact, many insider accounts describe how the bonus/pay structure was a major consideration for not wanting to take TARP money or in deciding which firm would be a better target to for acquisition (retail banks are much less likely to pay the huge bonuses).