Rating: 
Summary: Go teen!
Review: "Cruel Intentions" as teen's "Les Liaisons Dangereuses", "Boiler Room" as teen's "Wall Street"... If you make those kind of re-makes have it done at least as "10 things about you". ;-))) P.S. I am ready for more "interpreteens". Go teen! I love "Opposite sex".
Rating: 
Summary: Nice mix of fast-paced stuff and sensitive character moments
Review: It's funny. Contrary to many others (including Amazon's own house reviewer), I LIKED the character moments between Giovanni Ribisi and the always excellent Ron Rifkin on display in "Boiler Room". I thought the scenes of dad and son were sensitively acted and full of honest emotion. The rest of the movie was entertaining, too, but as others have noted, so much of the story was derivative of "Wall Street" and "Glengarry Glen Ross". So, for me, the family scenes were what made this movie feel fresh to me. The DVD extras are interesting, especially the inclusion of an alternate, more downbeat ending. This is not a bad little film, though I doubt it will find its way onto many movie fans' "all-time favorites" list.
Rating:
Summary: Not nearly as good as the films that inspired it.
Review: Boiler Room was a true let down for me.Not only did this film open with a fascinating first half, but it bosted two of today's best young stars, Vin Diesel and Ben Affleck. Boiler Room is a film about the power of greed and the corruption of the soul. The first 45 minues or so are wonderful as the film's central character is essentially seduced into a shady stock brokerage firm filled to the brim with money grubbing young men.The first problem with Boiler Room is that it sets up most of the firm's brokers as well dressed thugs. They go out and get in fights almost nightly. None of these characters are very likable, and presenting them as thugs is hardly a respectable decision. It becomes harder and harder to take this film seriously, in a world of business, these guys act like they stumbled out of a college frat party. Perhaps this is one of Boiler Room's major points, to present the newest generation of 'yuppies' as cutthroats and scum. Writer/Director Ben Younger does achieve a certain degree of ambiguity here with this gimick, but Boiler Room completely crumbles away in its second half.Giovanni Ribisi's character Seth briefly enjoys success at the firm but becomes suspicious of it all too quickly. Soon he discovers that his firm is essentially a fraud and without giving too much away must eventually choose to do the right thing for the right people. This seemed a silly plot twist for a film trying to be as sharp and truthful about this new generation of 'businessmen', perhaps it's not very far fetched, but Boiler Room's second half is as distracting and ridiculous as any Big Hollywood film. We get a pointless romance with the firm's secretary and an interesting but unnecessary relationship between father and son. Add it all up and Boiler Room turns out to be a well intentioned film with too many half cooked ideas floating throughout. An excellent cast tries hard, but this Wall Street/ Glengarry Glen Ross inspired drama never really achieves anything it sets out to, some intresting ideas rolled up into an adolescant Wall Street do not a good movie make.
Rating:
Summary: Generation X's WALL STREET
Review: As I watched BOILER ROOM I kept thinking about the 80s movie WALL STREET. The plots were incredibly simular. I prefered the movie WALL STREET over BOILER ROOM but both were good.Both movies show the coruption and greed that can be found in stock trading. Both movies show how youth can easily be caught up in the lure of big money at any cost. Also both movies show how greed and going against your conscience will lead to nothing but trouble.
Rating: 
Summary: reeeeeeaaaalllyy, gooooooood
Review: ah, the boiler room, what more does a person want. it wa reeeaaaallly gooood, that's all i have to say. giovanni ribisi, couldn't have done a better job. all the other actors, were great too. ben afflec who plays the recruiter, was the perfect role for jim young. and vin diesel, we all remember him form saving private ryan. he was absolutely spectacular. the only low point of the movie was the ending. i don't like endings like this. it leaves you asking what happened to seth, abby, chris, jim, michael, etc. you wanna know because you start to like the people in it. you get attached and you root for them throughout the movie. i give it a big high five.
Rating: 
Summary: brave view of modern morality
Review: Genuine honest-to-God timeliness is a rarity in contemporary filmmaking. So many movies end up using topicality as mere window dressing to gussy up otherwise conventional screenplays that, when a film arrives on the scene that is truly attuned to the truths of its time, it becomes something of a revelation. How many recent thrillers, for instance, have simply turned to high tech computer hardware in an attempt to infuse a little novelty into stories that otherwise creak with old age? `Boiler Room' is a different story altogether. Even though, at its most basic level, this film taps into themes that trace their origins all the way back to the earliest ancient Greek tragedies, somehow `Boiler Room' manages to convey a vision of the world that is uniquely modern and chillingly contemporary in its character. In this era in which Wall Street has become the new American icon and in which even the most ill-informed common citizen is led to believe that he can become a millionaire almost overnight with virtually no financial risk merely by making a few shrewd investments in an ever-expanding stock market, any number of opportunists crouch poised for the kill, ready to spring on the unsuspecting investor and take him for all he is worth. This is the world `Boiler Room' opens up to us. Commendably, writer/director Ben Younger realizes (as so many others have not) that, in the world of drama, moral ambiguity is always more fascinating than colorless, good-vs.-evil simplicity. As a result, he has chosen, as the center of his complex screenplay, a young man, Seth Davis, who is, from the first moment we meet him, knee deep in the world of shady entrepreneurial skullduggery. Having quit college to run an underground casino out of his off-campus apartment, Seth jumps at the chance to move onto bigger and better things when he is offered a position at an `off Wall Street' stock brokerage firm that assures him he will be making a cool million dollars before his third year with the company is up. Thus, Seth becomes a symbol for so many young people today who have become so dazzled by the prospect of a near-instant wealth that seems just within their grasp that they abandon all thoughts of morality and decency in their blind race to the goal. And, indeed, one of the most insidiously effective scenes in the film is the inspirational pep talk that Ben Affleck delivers to the raw recruits at the beginning of the film. So dazzling and convincing is the speech and so inspirational and passionate its delivery that even we in the audience feel like we are missing out on a great thing. For, of course, Seth slowly learns that all is not true-blue and on the up-and-up in this firm as he discovers that he is indeed involved with a financial `chop shop' whose sole business it is to rip off weak, vulnerable and unsuspecting men looking for a few good investments. What is most admirable about this film is that, as Seth begins to realize the truth of the situation, he doesn't turn suddenly noble and righteous as he might in the hands of a less sophisticated author. Instead, he begins to think of ways to benefit himself financially by betraying the very scammers who have taken him into their operation. In fact, it is only after he is arrested by the FBI that Seth finally sees the need to do the right thing and to make restitution to the two men whose lives he has truly ruined - a young Wisconsin man whose marriage crumbles after he allows Seth to talk him into blowing his new-home down payment on a phony stock and Seth's own father, a morally upright federal judge, who in a moment of filial weakness, tries to help Seth with an illegal action and ends up getting implicated in the FBI probe as a result. However, Seth is not a thoroughly bad person; he is neither ruthless nor heartless, yet he has an enormous ability to rationalize his immoral actions within the common framework of achieving that instant wealth he somehow feels he is owed, despite the fact that his father certainly does not reflect that thinking. In fact, the relationship between Seth and his father underlines the moral complexity of Younger's tale. We feel for Seth because he has lived his whole life yearning to earn his father's respect yet making all the wrong choices in his quest to garner it. Yet, we also empathize with a father, caught between trying to model a sense of moral rectitude and maintain his own spotless reputation as a judge yet, at the same time, desiring to provide help for his child in need. And these are, after all, little more than twenty-something children dressed up as adults, an incongruity that Younger captures with uncanny brilliance. Despite the fact that they are involving themselves in million dollar deals and ruining countless lives in the process, these `men' have advanced little beyond the stage of frat-boy rambunctiousness in their behavior. We see them erupting into fistfights at local yuppie bars with similarly well-dressed members of a competing firm; we hear, pouring liberally out of their mouths, vehemently racist, woman-bashing and gay-bashing comments that solidify the exclusiveness of the world to which they belong; we witness them reciting verbatim, almost as if it were Holy Scripture, lines of dialogue from the movie that has become an emblem for their generation - not `Star Wars' but Oliver Stone's `Wall Street.' And, just as Younger forces us to identify with the hunger these men have for instantaneous financial success, he, even more effectively, helps us to identify with the poor ill-informed schmucks who are at the other end of the phone, being railroaded into making decisions they feel powerless to control. So bedazzled are they (and we) by the dizzying barrage of alien terminology pouring forth from the other end of the receiver that capitulation seems inevitable. For its glimpse into the inner workings of boiler rooms alone, the film earns its kudos as a fascinating experience. The outstanding cast is headed by Giovanni Ribisi, who creates a subtle portrait of a young man torn between his better angels - in the form of his own innate conscience and a beautiful young woman who is also a part of the firm - and the bitter demons of a morally bankrupt, value-free grab for instant wealth. The remainder of the cast is equally impressive. There is literally in this film, not a single character of potential `goodness' - not Seth, not the firm's secretary (Nia Long), not Seth's parents - who is not, at one point or another, forced to confront a great moral dilemma and found wanting. This is the kind of narrative courage that defines `Boiler Room' from beginning to end.
Rating:
Summary: what happened to the ending?
Review: The film, probably not intensionally, is a good morality play concerning the negative effects of greed and the moral choices we must make. Affleck is not on the screen long at all, unlike the trailors. Everyone puts in a fine performance. And the plot and pacing of the film are wonderful. I'm getting into the film and getting interested in what's happening and then suddenly... the film just abruptly ends. It was like they ran out of film so they just put up the credits. Did they run out of money to shoot the film? I don't understand. There is more story to tell, but not enough to force a sequel.
Rating:
Summary: Worst commentary ever!
Review: I love the extra features on DVDs, especially the commentaries, but this one is just painful. They clearly had nothing to say, but felt compelled to babble aimlessly...."you know"..."or whatever". They made a decent movie. I may even watch it again, but that commentary has to be the all time worst!
Rating:
Summary: Never a dull moment, but the ending needed work
Review: Young single men in their early twenties plus a lot of money equals, in the first two-thirds of the movie, one of the highest testosterone quotients in the history of the cinema. This is "Maxim" come to life. This is why most of us don't want to work anywhere near the sales staff ... anywhere. Even Nia Long has balls in this movie. I think this must come close to "The Blair Witch Project" for most on-screen uses of the F word, and once you factor in all the other dirty words it makes the profanity of its subject matter joyously palpable. There are some truly great scenes here - the "Rocky Horror"-izing of "Wall Street has been noted in these reviews, and it's great. But my favorite that no one's noted (I had to hit the pause button to laugh for a minute or two) was Ribisi's response to getting telemarketed by the Daily News. I'm going to keep that in mind for the next telemarketing call I get. I never thought of that approach to this all too common modern annoyance which, I freely admit, I have been on the giving end of. Younger has a great eye for framing his scenes and I like the look he gave the film, a real feel for his Long Island and NYC locations. I do admit there are some problems with the plot ... I get the feeling the movie was trimmed a bit to keep it under two hours for that one extra daily screening, and as a result some of the plot elements come across a bit haphazardly, such as the FBI investigation and Ribisi's relationship with Long. At the same time there's no need for the subplot with the guy who loses his life's savings ... why show all those bits? They get a little pedantic. The scenes with his dad work better because of Ron Rifkin's no-nonsense portrayal, but the last one seems forced, and I'm still waiting for a real end to the whole movie. But overall I recommend it with the caveats that there's a lot of grimly authentic male behavior in this movie, including crudeness, violence and lots of swearing.
Rating:
Summary: Extra's Review (the film gets 3 1/2)
Review: A quick note. I had never seen the movie before I bought the DVD, as it has not been released in Holland, but with all the extra i figured why not. Generally I love directors commentaries, but if given the choice between hearing Boiler Room's commentary again or being forced to listen to "Nimoy Sings" it would be a close call with the pseudo-vulcan winning. This is one of the most boring commentaires I have ever listened to. G. Ribisi is mildly enjoyable as he talks about his relationships with some of the actors, but the director Ben Younger and the Producer (one of the Todd sisters) seem much to much in love with their voices than the movie. They speak of little not nothing except for how he got the gig to direct. Worst of all is hearing the Angel complain about the male dominated world of DJ'ing. The outtakes are so-so (and no not add to the story, thus make sense to be removed), the alternate ending I actually prefered to the actual ending. If you are like me and extra's can make or break if you are going to buy a marginal film, this would be a pass.
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