‘Arbitrage’ gets stuck in Gere

At 63, Richard Gere is still a sex symbol. The guy is still in good shape and doesn’t seem to have lost a strand of his silvery gray hair. And, at 63, Richard Gere is still a mediocre actor who squints his eyes to convey pain and confusion and doesn’t seem to be able to express more than a of emotion handful of emotions. Gere isn’t able to make Arbitrage, a new thriller about a billionaire hedge fund manager who’s trying to sell his company before he falls into a multimillion-dollar hole in its books, anything more than a dialed back Wall Street or a second-rate Michael Clayton.

The plot centers on Robert Miller (Gere), an investor who took a chance on a Russian copper mine. When it didn’t yield the dividends he expected, it cost him, so he borrowed $400 million from a friend while waiting for a federal audit that would finalize the investment company’s sale. In the meantime, his daughter Brooke (Brit Marling), the company’s CEO, notices the books have been cooked and starts questing dear old dad. He confesses to the crime but tells her she’s got to stop being naïve: If he didn’t fraudulently shuffle around the funds, the family fortune would be wiped out.

But Robert’s crumbling company and divided family aren’t the only things troubling the guy. He’s been having a passionate affair with Julie, a French artist (Laetitia Casta), who’s been pressuring him to leave his wife (Susan Sarandon). As the couple heads out of the city for a spur-of-the-moment getaway, Robert crashes her car on a rural highway. Knowing his private life is under intense scrutiny because of the sale of his company, he walks away from the accident and calls his only working class friend, Jimmy (Nate Parker), to give him a lift. It’s not long, however, before a police investigation catches up to him and a detective (Tim Roth) starts unraveling the crime, but he’s missing some key evidence.

What’s interesting about watching this game play out is that every single player in this morality tale compromises his or her character along the way.  The movie has enough twists and turns to keep you guessing and it’s artfully filmed, too. But centered on Gere, it just doesn’t climb from good to great.