A new generation wrestle with the same ol’ sins in Wall St: Money Never Sleeps.

Amongst director Oliver Stone’s varied morality plays, Wall St. was the most straight forward and mainstream.

There was Gordon Gekko, epitome of greed and vanity played with oily cunning by Michael Douglas, dangling millions in front of the naive Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) who followed the money like an ass does a carrot tied to a piece of string, selling his soul and selling out his blue collar father (Martin Sheen), creating a wrenching conclusion worthy of Shakespeare’s best tragedies.

Yet while that dance with the Devil played to a simple yet groovy rhythm, its sequel Money Never Sleeps is a mish-mash of multiple plot lines and visual stylings that has Stone gliding with slick ease at one instance, only to stumble over himself in others.

After all, this is a different world we’re living in, even though its temptations are the same. Millionaires are old news; billions is the current standard of financial success, and Gekko also has Generation Y to contend with. Poor bastard.

Opening the film with Gekko fresh from a lengthy stint in jail for insider trading, slicked hair now in a tangle and a vintage cell phone resembling a plastic brick in hand, proves just how out of place he is.

He quickly learns that these days it’s not enough to have money; an ideal is just as prominent.

Proving the point is Jacob, a successful trader for a prestigious firm, who also invests his money and time into a company paving the way for clean energy, Shia LaBeouf playing the role with slick charm and intelligence.

He is set to marry Gekko’s estranged daughter Winnie (Carey Mulligan, effective yet underused) an editor of a popular left wing blog.

Wedding plans are put on hold when Jacob’s firm is torn apart, and his mentor (Frank Langella) commits suicide. As sure as money is green, Jacob plots revenge against the man responsible for it all, hedge fund czar Bretton James, Josh Brolin effectively mixing fat cat with Prince of Darkness.

With all of his players in place, Stone pulls of a masterstroke by having Gekko on the outs, long forgotten, and raging against the greed he once championed.

Declaring money as a cancer rather than societies saviour, Gekko in turn becomes the voice of Stone’s conscious, which predicably rings loud and slightly to the left. Douglas in turn delivers a turn worthy of his character’s infamy, injecting new facets while also easing into many old ones.

Sure, Stone uses the recent financial crisis for many soapbox politicizing. Yet Money Never Sleeps isn’t so much a film about capitalism, as it is about relationships, especially between the old (mentors, parents) and the young (protégés, children).

Yet clocking in at well over 2 hrs, Money Never Sleeps does stagnate, Stone leaving too much fat his films’ vibrant bustle just cannot burn off.

In the end it is Stone’s own greed which stops Wall St: Money Never Sleeps from becoming the classic it should be, yet it is his skills as a master filmmaker and the performances of his cast which makes this an engrossing, albeit cluttered watch.