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Journalistic practices an afterthought in Jodie Foster's 'Money Monster'

Patty Fenn, the director of the popular financial advice TV show "Money Monster," assures a nervous guest that she has nothing to worry about during an interview.

"We don't do 'gotcha' journalism here," Fenn says.

Then, almost under her breath, she adds, "We don't do journalism at all."

This constitutes the simple most important sentence in Jodie Foster's media thriller "Money Monster," because it reveals the essence of the muddled screenplay: to remind errant 21st-century journalists of their professional responsibilities.

Fenn (played with plucky cool by Julia Roberts) and condescending TV host Lee Gates (finessed by George Clooney) long ago fell into the infotainment trap, where verified, useful information has been replaced by flashy visuals, screaming crawls, snarky attitudes and cornball showbiz theatrics.

It takes a desperate man with a gun and a bomb to force them to redeem their journalistic souls.

Kyle Budwell (Jack O'Connell), a distraught working-class stiff, has lost his savings on a bad stock tip Gates advised on a company that saw $800 million vanish because of a computer "glitch." Budwell is mad as hell and can't take it anymore.

To set things right, Budwell poses as a delivery man and slips through the TV studio's back door.

He brandishes a semi-automatic pistol and hijacks Gates' live TV show, taking him and the crew hostage. Budwell forces Gates to wear a bomb vest that will detonate if his thumb fails to keep pressure on the detonator's trigger. He demands answers from the people who lost his money.

The rest of "Money Monster" plays out in real-time as a confused, frightened Gates bumbles about, attempting to negotiate with the gunman while the cops move in and Fenn's cautiously reasoned voice feeds strategy and reassurance to her star through an ear piece.

When all else fails - and all else fails miserably - Fenn and Gates have no other option but to actually become real journalists and perform the duties real journalists do:

Ask the hard questions.

Dig for difficult answers.

Hold the powerful accountable.

Advocate fairness and justice in a society that has forgotten how to spell the words.

"Money Monster" could have become the most important movie about journalism since last year's Oscar-winning "Spotlight."

But Foster treats "Money Monster" as a conventional crime thriller with shards of humor (a shrill bit about erectile cream doesn't belong here) and a tentative third-act moral epiphany that runs contrary to the film's refreshingly blunt pessimism.

(In the movie's most audacious scene, Gates implores tens of millions of viewers to save his life by purchasing just a few stock shares to drive up their value. The stock sinks.)

"Money Monster" reverberates with echoes of "Network" and "Dog Day Afternoon" with a "Big Short" vibe, yet its quick discoveries and narrative shortcuts undermine the dramatic intensity that Foster clearly intended.

Irish actress Caitriona Balfe (of STARZ "Outlander" fame) cuts an impressive authority figure as Diane Lester, the chief communications officer (i.e. PR flack) for the company that lost the $800 million.

Dominic West projects an ideal proportion of sleaze and entitlement as the slippery Walt Camby, the vanished corporate CEO from whom Budwell demands answers for the "glitch" and the losses.

O'Connell, the rising young star of the fact-based World War II drama "Unbroken," imbues his one-dimensional tragic antagonist with appealing sincerity.

Not so with Clooney's snake-oil salesman masquerading as a financial wizard of odds. When he tells his captor, "We're in this together," we cannot be sure if he means it, or is simply a victim of an onset of Stockholm syndrome.

“Money Monster”

★ ★ ½

Starring: Julia Roberts, George Clooney, Jack O'Connell, Dominic West, Caitriona Balfe

Directed by: Jodie Foster

Other: A TriStar Pictures release. Rated R for language, sexual situations and violence. 90 minutes

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