From the mind of notorious German writer/director Uwe Boll (House of the Dead), Assault on Wall Street is an excoriating look at the American financial system that is sure to stir up plenty of criticisms. A security guard for an armoured truck, Jim (Dominic Purcell) is an average blue-collar New Yorker who works hard to earn a living. His wages support himself and his wife Rosie (Erin Karpluk), who is on the upswing recovering from cancer. Suddenly, everything changes when the economy crashes causing Jim to lose everything. Rosie’s health insurance stops covering her treatment and Jim’s life savings are lost via a disastrous investment his stockbroker had advised him to make.
As a row of professional and personal dominoes falls, Jim is confronted by the realisation that, after being abused and exploited by financial institutions for far too long, he has only one choice: to strike back.
When Rosie winds up killing herself out of desperation, the grief-stricken Jim snaps and goes to extreme lengths to seek revenge for the life taken from him. Filled with anger and rage, he plans out his violent revenge, purchasing an arsenal from a sleazy arms dealer and targeting his victims by perusing financial magazines. He kicks out against a nebulous culture of faceless bankers that he holds responsible for all of the problems in his life and goes on an impulsive rampage by blowing them up in a brutal revenge attack.
Rather than following up with a realisation of shame and grief in the aftermath of these nonsensical attacks as he recognizes that he has wiped billions of dollars from the global stock markets and has made a bad situation even worse, instead, he then goes on to murder more bankers whom he feels are the catalyst in the destruction of his life and even kills off those who have minor administrative jobs within companies that are only tangentially related to his perceived woes.
He shoots his broker in the head and then turns his sights on all the white collar professionals gawking at the windows. Round after round is fired at nameless, faceless white button-down shirts. Entering the building of the investment firm that stole his life savings, he puts on a white mask and shoots some more.
So, in summary, in the first hour of this film Jim loses everything and vows revenge. The last half hour has Jim in 80′s Action mode, as he rents a motel room, practices shooting various firearms, and pledges to take the financial wizards to the (blood) bank. All this, and the audience is meant to root for this lunatic because he is a ‘soldier of the people.’ I can see what statement Boll was trying to make with this film– that every wrong doing is essentially all down to the bank’s fault but I can also see why Uwe Boll’s name is often synonymous with bad cinema.
