Cash McCall (James Garner) is a slick amoral businessman known for buying faltering old companies and reselling them for profit. Grant Austen (Dean Jagger) is the head of Austen Plastics but he gets threatened by his biggest customer. He considers selling his company. Cash is interested and then he is presented to Grant's daughter Lory (Natalie Wood). Unbeknownst to her father, they have a tumultuous history.
McCall is basically Gordon Gekko but he doesn't have an iconic catch phrase and not nearly as unethical. He needs to be more unethical. This is not really a compelling business story and then it is limited as a romantic story as well. If he was actually guilty, the movie could build some real drama. The romance is limited in that it has uninteresting hurdles which is made up of bad sitcom writing. Apparently, the relationship has all the hurdles built in the summer before. They happened before the movie off-screen and there is little for it to move. There is a bad female villain who has her melodramatic scheme. There isn't any relationship drama that is truly dramatic. It may work better if the movie included that summer. I was hoping for better with Garner and Wood. I like them but the story isn't working that much.
McCall is basically Gordon Gekko but he doesn't have an iconic catch phrase and not nearly as unethical. He needs to be more unethical. This is not really a compelling business story and then it is limited as a romantic story as well. If he was actually guilty, the movie could build some real drama. The romance is limited in that it has uninteresting hurdles which is made up of bad sitcom writing. Apparently, the relationship has all the hurdles built in the summer before. They happened before the movie off-screen and there is little for it to move. There is a bad female villain who has her melodramatic scheme. There isn't any relationship drama that is truly dramatic. It may work better if the movie included that summer. I was hoping for better with Garner and Wood. I like them but the story isn't working that much.