Barnes & Noble

Ben Younger's Boiler Room is a morality tale about sleazy stockbrokers that freely acknowledges its antecedents: The film's young, would-be millionaires spend their evenings in unfurnished mansions watching Wall Street on a big-screen TV and recite lines from Glengarry Glen Ross by heart. The mesmerizing Giovanni Ribisi stars as a college dropout with get-rich-quick dreams who joins a low-end brokerage house only to discover he's being taught to bilk families out of their life savings. The fun of Boiler Room is in the vibrant portrait it paints of a particularly high-pressure brand of salesmanship, with characters mouthing such memorable catch phrases as "don't pitch the bitch" (i.e., don't sell to women). Vin Diesel and Nicky Katt are vivid as Ribisi's fellow brokers, and Ben Affleck gets to deliver some zingy, testosterone-laced monologues urging new recruits to stop at nothing in their quest for the all-important "close." Ribisi's relationship with his disapproving father and his affair with the firm's secretary add some emotional dimension, but Boiler Room is really a boys' flick -- it's at its energetic best when exploring the rituals of an all-male universe where misogyny and bad manners rule. Gregory Baird

All Movie Guide

In this drama that explores greed and corruption in American business, Giovanni Ribisi plays Seth Davis, an intelligent and ambitious college dropout who runs a casino in his apartment. Eager to show his father that he can succeed, Seth lands a job with a small stock brokerage firm. He is given a space in the company's "boiler room," where he makes cold calls to prospective clients. As it turns out, Seth has a genuine talent for cold calling, which gains him the approval of his superiors, the admiration of his father, and the attentions of one of his co-workers, Abby Hilliard (Nia Long). However, the higher up the ladder Seth rises, the deeper he sinks into a quagmire of dirty dealings, until he's breaking the law in order to keep his bosses happy and his paychecks coming. The Boiler Room also features Tom Everett Scott, Scott Caan, Jamie Kennedy, Nicky Katt, and Ben Affleck in a cameo as the headhunter who brings Seth into the firm. Ribisi and Scott also appeared together in That Thing You Do; Ribisi was the drummer replaced by Scott, who then led The One-Ders to fictional pop stardom. Mark Deming

Product Details

• UPC: 065935825791
• Source: ALLIANCE CANADA
• Presentation: Wide Screen
• Sound: DTS 5.1-Channel Surround Sound, Dolby AC-3 Surround Sound
• Editions: Dubbed
• Time: 2:00:00
• Sales Rank: 45,525

This DVD is also available as part of a box set:

• Man Apart/Boiler Room/the Knockaround Guys