Boring Concept Done as Well as Possible
Suuuuuper boring idea... stock market terrorism? Huh? I'm sorry but a market manipulation movie doesn't cut it, it's not exciting, nor, is it a 'thinking' film where a stock trade happens and, boom, climax? That's why there are so few movies about the stock market and if there is one, it's never about the numbers, it's about the people (like "Wolf of Wall Street"). But to try and make that an action film is kinda stupid, honestly. However, with that said, for as lame of a concept as it is... they made it as exciting as possible. It was shot beautifully, the editing was top notch (they had some 180 issues in the dinner scene, both actors looking at the same side of the screen), the acting was great across the board.
The motivation for 'the bad guy' was paper thin and never really made sense. He punches out a guy giving him a shot - oooohh, he's bad... then he shoots a guy he works with, because, why? Oh, he's bad, that's right. Other than that, what does he do? Then, his overall thing is that he wants to manipulate the market... and that was supposed to be Plan A for Russia, yet, his "Plan A" was to first blow up Wall Street, literally, then sell the currency after? AFTER? Why would he care about blowing up Wall Street? He hates America so much, loved Russia so much... but instead, it was somehow personal so he sent his son to do it? WHY was it so personal? Never explained. He just did it to do it? To me, if you wanted to make it personal, sell the stocks... cash out... then blow it up 'after' you cashed out. Makes zero sense for him to just randomly want to blow-up Wall Street.
Also, Jack's timeline was confusing, where it jumped ahead, like, 10 years, as it didn't really explain it... since Knightly was attending to him in the hospital a year and a half after 9/11 (so the start of 2003), then he rehabs for however long (two years?), making it around 2005, then they date for three years before he asks her to marry him, so 2008. Then where did all of today's technology come from? Unless I'm missing something but nowhere did I get the impression that they were dating for over 10 years... and, if so, what woman in the world would sit around waiting for 10 years before getting a ring?
It was mess, horrible writing... but still, from a technical standpoint, it looked as good as it possibly could and finally had some decent action towards the end... without much motivation for it, mind you.