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Corporate thriller Equity is almost too slick

EQUITY (Meera Menon). 100 minutes. See listing. Rating: NNN


Director Meera Menon’s corporate thriller is utterly compelling and numbingly schematic.

From the double-entendre title to its scenes of bankers facing off over Jenga, Equity puts its cards on the table and leaves the misdirection to its conniving characters. In playwright-turned-screenwriter Amy Fox’s conception, double-crossing and ruthless -manipulation are business as usual. It’s genuinely refreshing to see the “greed is good” ethos converge with the obstacles faced by enterprising women on Wall Street, but unsubtle Equity’s books are way overcooked.

Publicly shamed for dropping the ball on an IPO, senior investment banker Naomi (Anna Gunn) is determined to reassert her worth. Naomi lassos Cachét, a privacy-focused social media company looking to take its stock public, but her purchase on her coveted client is compromised three-fold: -Naomi’s young eager-beaver VP (Sarah Megan Thomas) is flirting with -Cachét’s arrogant mastermind a hedge fund deal-maker who also -happens to be Naomi’s lover (James Purefoy) is quietly sniffing out opportunity from the sidelines and a federal agent (Alysia Reiner) is determined to unearth some malfeasance within Naomi’s company.

The pacing is clipped, the camera work slick and every performance a model of modulated tension. But while a story in which every significant character is ruthlessly self-serving can make for diverting plot, it also leaves you hankering for a glimmer of heart.    

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