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Verdict: A high-powered descendant of "Wall Street" and "Glengarry Glen Ross."

Details: Starring Giovanni Ribisi, Vin Diesel and Ron Rifkin. Rated R for strong language and some drug content. 1 hour, 59 minutes.

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Review: A study of young, muscle-mouthed stockbrokers aiming to make their first million before getting their first wrinkle, "Boiler Room" pays on-screen tribute to the two movies it most resembles: "Wall Street" and "Glengarry Glen Ross." It translates the cutthroat energy of those flicks into a bracing, boom-year reminder that greed is still good — so long as you don't get caught when you pretzel the rules.

Seth (Giovanni Ribisi) is a 19-year-old dropout, running an illegal casino out of his Queens apartment. That doesn't exactly thrill his judgmental father (Ron Rifkin), who actually is a judge. So when one of Seth's gambling customers, Greg (Nicky Katt), invites him to try his hand as a stockbroker, Seth sees it as a way to get ahead and earn Dad's approval.

The career move doesn't take him to Wall Street, but to an innocuous office building on Long Island, home of the brokerage firm J.T. Marlin. The name intentionally sounds a lot like Wall Street's J.P. Morgan. If would-be investors accidentally think they're dealing with that recognized firm ... well, it's not the broker's fault, is it?

Marlin is really a chop shop, where the guys cold-call would-be customers and bully them with guy talk and reverse psychology until they invest in the day's latest speculative stock. The goal: to get rich as soon (and as easily) as possible. "Nobody wants to work for it any more," Seth says. The firm's center of operations is called the boiler room, an apt name given the heat and sweat generated by these guys (including Vin Diesel, Jamie Kennedy and Scott Caan) as they work the phones.

One of them explains it to Seth, saying, "You can be whoever you want to be on the phone." It's an excuse for the mild Seth to turn into an alpha male. It also gives Ribisi a dynamic acting range. He runs with it, letting us watch Seth discover his inner shark as he masters the art of the sell: part performance art, part relentless seduction.

Writer-director Ben Younger experienced the sales pitch of a boiler room recruiter in real life. His fascination with the thrill-junkie life of these stock jocks is reflected in the script's sharp, arrogant dialogue (including a rude phrase that sums up the guys' rule of never doing business with women).

The lively talk extends beyond the brokerage walls. When Seth tells his father that he wants to talk about their "relationship," Dad zings his choice of word: "What, are we dating?" Speaking of Dad, the movie (just like "Wall Street") gets hamstrung with a last-act focus on father-son conflict. Sure, it's effective. It's also hokey.

Some other minuses: Younger manufactures a cardboard romance between Seth and the firm's secretary, a role that's only the latest to reduce the talented Nia Long to sexy set decor. Other characters (including the shadowy head of J.T. Marlin, Tom Everett Scott) don't seem well-defined; it feels as though scenes have been cut for length. Oh, and another thing: The movie shows that Younger is making his debut as a director. While his script is taut, his visuals are sometimes cruddy.

The flaws are balanced by the film's bad-boy energy and the actors' clear delight in their characters' tirades and testosterone. The cast includes Ben Affleck as Marlin's senior recruiter. Given to rat-a-tat proclamations about the rules of the game, he's basically doing a riff on the tough-talking role played by Alec Baldwin in "Glengarry." In only a few minutes on-screen, Affleck shows more vigor than in all two hours of his upcoming action flick, "Reindeer Games."

— Steve Murray, Cox News Service

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