Boiler Room

Giovanni Ribisi (The Mod Squad) stars as Seth Davis, a young “entrepreneur” who gets involved in illegal day trading, in this debut drama from writer-director Ben Younger. Boiler Room has a bold, in-your-face style that befits the subject matter, and Younger doesn’t pull any punches in his portrayal of all of the characters’ vicious and ultimately self-defeating greed. This has all been done before, though, and Boiler Room feels too much like a youthful hybrid of Wall Street and Glengarry Glen Ross. It doesn’t help that those two films are actually mentioned in the script — it’s a really bad idea for a director to draw attention to what he is ripping off. Younger shows promise as a filmmaker, but he needs to stop copying other people’s movies and come up with something of his own. (R) Rating: 6