Reviewer: Justine Marland Gordo
Rating of the movie: 5/5★
Genre: Autobiography
Film on Netflix The Billionaire Boys Club tells the true story of Joseph Henry Hunt’s ( played by Ansel Elgort) quick rise to fame and fortune and his even quicker fall. The narrative is captivating, featuring misguided ideals and diving deeply into themes that examine the lengths men would go to in order to pursue their financial desires. There’s also the social component. The main character Joseph Hunt struggle with keeping up with the lifestyles he has exposed himself too which prods him to imbibe unmitigated greed is part and parcel of American life and has remained unchanged up to the present.
The club enticed the sons of wealthy families from the Harvard School for Boys. (now Harvard-Westlake School; not affiliated with Harvard University) in the Los Angeles area with get-rich-quick schemes. Due to the reputation of the organization for being composed of young, inexperienced men from moneyed families, it was jokingly referred to as the “Billionaire Boys’ Club”. Hunt himself came from a single-parent family in the lower-middle-class suburb of Van Nuys and was able to attend the Harvard School only with the help of scholarships.
The movie focuses on both the power and recklessness of youth. Yet it is stilted, closely devoid of the vibrancy and verve to make it work. It starts out promising but ends up being a work of diminishing returns, where every step it takes towards its predictable outcome results in further limpness and confusion in motive. The organization was run as a Ponzi Scheme and money contributed by investors was spent on supporting lavish lifestyles for young members of the club.
Hunt and club security director Jim Pittman were charged with the murder of Levin, a con artist, who had allegedly swindled the BBC out of over $4 million. Levin’s body was never found, and Hunt maintains that Levin, who was under criminal investigation and out on bail at the time of his disappearance, instead fled the country to escape prosecution.
When authorities began to investigate the murders, Dean Karny, the club’s second-in-command and Hunt’s best friend, turned state’s evidence on both murders in return for immunity from prosecution on three different felony charges.
BBC members Hunt, Pittman, Karny (before his immunity deal), Arben Dosti, and Reza Eslaminia were charged with the murder of Hedayat Eslaminia, Reza’s father. They allegedly killed him to acquire his fortune, which was reputed to be $35 million (the senior Eslaminia was, in fact, nearly penniless).
It is riddled with so many distractions. There are hints of romance, but it only diverts the film from its darker directions.
Billionaire Boys Club certainly looks the part, with its visual design clearly aimed to show California from decades back, complete with even a sudden appearance of a flirty Andy Warhol consorting with Levin.
However, the look is wildly inconsistent with everything else. The narration is odd and out of place, putting the events under a dubiously sentimental perspective.
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