A Walmart “Wall Street,” the hedge-fund drama “Supercapitalist” is junk merchandise stamped “made in China.”
Trying on Charlie Sheen’s snarl and suits is Derek Ting, a hotshot young analyst whose arrogance gets him thrown out of his Wall Street office and sent to Hong Kong to look into the numbers of a proud but failing company. Amid much meaningless financial chatter, he gets schooled in how to act like a junior master of the universe from a colleague (Darren E. Scott) while a girl (Kathy Uyen) mutters about “making a difference.” Her dad works at the troubled company, which Ting believes he can save with a social-networking gimmick that sounds about as useful to the bottom line as an Employee of the Month promotion.
Not only is the plot predictable and borrowed, but Ting is completely without star power, especially in the (few) scenes he shares with the veteran pro Linus Roache, who in the Gordon Gekko role is even styled to look like 1987 Michael Douglas. Ting, meanwhile, barely comes across as a professional actor. As he rushed through his lines like a stand-in and failed to register any interest in the goings on, I leafed through my notes: Ah, he’s the writer and producer. As a writer-producer, he might want to find a better lead; then again, as a lead, he might want to find a more original script.