Movie Review - Billionaire Boys Club (2018)

This film is notable because it's the last project starring Kevin Spacey to be released either on TV or in theaters, following the sexual misconduct allegations against him. There would have been another, namely All the Money in the World (2017), but Sony Pictures and director Ridley Scott made the decision to reshoot the movie, recasting Spacey all together. There also would have been the final season of House of Cards, but that show eliminated his character completely. It rewrote the whole thing and delayed its release. Netflix has just as much money, if not more cash than Sony, so it could afford to do the same. This film was financed by a company that isn't one of the five, major Hollywood studios or one of the powerful Internet companies, so it clearly didn't have the resources to reshoot and recast Spacey, given that his role is so significant.

One can watch this film and try to divorce oneself from thinking about Spacey's sexual misconduct allegations, but that's increasingly difficult for several reasons. For starters, Spacey plays Ron Levin, a real-life, con artist who died in 1984. One wrinkle is that the allegations against Spacey revealed that he's gay, a fact that Spacey kept hidden for his 30-year career. While Spacey's sexuality has been questioned in films like American Beauty (1999) and even in House of Cards (2013), he's never played an openly gay character, which might not be the case here.

Spacey's interpretation of Ron Levin does seem to traffic in gay stereotypes. It's most evident in a scene where Ron Levin is seated next to Andy Warhol, played by Cary Elwes (The Princess Bride). Warhol was an openly gay artist who rose to prominence in the 1960's, yet you'd think him straight compared to Ron and how Spacey camps for the camera.

Yet, that wouldn't have been an issue if Spacey's character wasn't fawning over a young boy for the majority of his time here. Many of Spacey's misconduct allegations revolve around him making unwanted advances to younger boys, bordering on child molestation. All the boys here are in their 20's, but it's still cringe-worthy given that every scene with Spacey involve him getting incredibly close physically to one boy in particular. One scene even involves Spacey doing so in his character's bedroom and on his character's bed. Ironically, if not for Spacey's allegations, a homoerotic take might have been interesting here.

Ansel Elgort (The Fault in Our Stars and Divergent) stars as Joe Hunt, a 24-year-old stockbroker or commodities trader. He lives with his father in Los Angeles. He's very early in his career, but he's frustrated and wants more. One day, an old friend connects him to wealthy, young guys from the same prep school they attended. He manages to convince those guys to invest in his company BBC. After lying about how well the company is doing in the gold market, he's able to get other, wealthy men to invest in the company, but it's all just a Ponzi scheme. The company doesn't actually do anything and isn't making any money. This doesn't stop Joe from spending like crazy. When the rug is pulled from under him, he's left with millions of debt and no way to pay it back, which leads him to desperate measures.

What's strange is that Judd Nelson plays the father of Joe Hunt. In 1987, Nelson was in a TV movie, also called Billionaire Boys Club, where he played Joe Hunt himself. That TV movie was actually a miniseries, so it had more time than this film and could go into Hunt's trial. As such, it could wrestle more with the question of culpability. This film doesn't wrestle much. It is instead totally sympathetic toward Joe Hunt and in effect tries to remove culpability from him.

Taron Egerton (Eddie the Eagle and Kingsman: The Secret Service) co-stars as Dean Karny, the old school friend who connects Joe to the wealthy guys. He basically becomes Joe's partner in crime, but, besides going to the same prep school, the film doesn't do much more to establish why these two were best friends and bonded over this company. We don't get any of Dean's backstory or much to inform his motivations. Yet, at almost every step, the film says that Dean is the most guilty and is the one most responsible for the most heinous crimes.

It's not to say that Dean isn't responsible, but the film wants us to believe that Joe was more swept up and didn't really have blood on his hands. In reality, the real-life Joe Hunt was convicted of murder and put on trial for a second murder. This film posits that he was wrongly convicted, despite being complicit. If that was director and co-writer James Cox's goal, he chose well in casting Elgort who just came off playing a sympathetic criminal in Baby Driver (2017), while also acting opposite Spacey who was only slightly lecherous there.

It should also be noted that Emma Roberts and Billie Lourd have small roles in this film and in one scene basically are their same characters from Scream Queens.

Rated R for language, drug use, some violence and sexual content.
Running Time: 1 hr. and 40 mins.

Available on DVD and VOD.