Corey Stanton’s Trader is a one-woman show, entirely resting on the shoulders of its actress, Kimberly-Sue Murray. She plays an unnamed trader with a harried, harrowing past who seeks to rebuild her life with shady smarts. The film severely stretches your belief in how accommodating you are in reposing trust in the incredible intelligence of its protagonist, who doesn’t take long to trip market tastemakers to their own game. All she seeks is a seat at the high table; she will do anything to get there.
To reach that coveted goal, she bulldozes past those she learnt the ropes from, otherwise they would have become the biggest impediments to her path. She is superbly canny, discerning, and perfectly aware of when she’s being taken for a ride. Neither does she let the situation get so unsalvageable that she would be powerless to twist it around to suit her will. She is a formidable player who stops at nothing. Others might still fear something and balk at pulling off massively ambitious coups, but she’s not governed by any trace of apprehension. It is her superpower.
Trader (2023) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:
Is the Breakneck Pace a Substitute for Substance?
The energy of the film is constantly hyperactive and frantically animated. We aren’t allowed to settle at a comfortable, easy, and deliberate pace. Perhaps it is a measure of the film to make us quit questioning the many contrivances in the tale and accept whatever unfolds with pure, undemanding investment. Too many questions will ruin the broth the film serves up. Yet, it is tough to wholly tide over how banal and puerile the plotting is. A lot of action, or mental mapping, unravels with us being barely given any scope to untangle how deductions are arrived at properly. It is doubtful if we are even supposed to buy into the rapidly progressing events emotionally. Logic is also in short supply. Quick-fix situations teem throughout the film, so we are asked to hasten along and not concern ourselves with too much pedantic details.
This would have worked to some degree had the film not been so threadbare in the most essential sense of detailing. By forsaking that elementary attention, the film alienates the viewer strongly, pushing us to a point where we can hardly care for the protagonist and her relentless pursuit of more money, power, and influence.
From Basement to Billionaire: A Gamble on Isolation?
After the unnamed protagonist successfully dupes a man for his money in the opening, we sense an immediate urge to achieve more. She lives in a type of basement in absolute seclusion. We never see her step outside. Provisions are delivered, and she sustains herself through various disingenuous measures. She comes across a book that sparks her interest in financial growth. On her insistence, the author reveals what it takes to fully strike success in day trading. One has to brace for an island life. It’d be essentially solitary confinement. Is she up for it?
She is more than willing and raring to wholly hurl herself into it. She creates a fake identity and leaps into the dark web to mine steady shots at the market mouth online stock market. Quickly, she makes her first killing, guided by the gospels of the author, whose words permeate the entire film in a ceaseless voiceover of exhortation and motivation. She accurately predicts the plummet in stocks of a pharma drug that is poised to bring about effective anti-cancer solutions.
How does Bob, the broker, lead her to her final, decisive gamble?
She manages to impress one of the stalwarts on the market, Bob (voiced by Shaun Benson). They start a telephonic correspondence that also snakes into flirtation. Bob reveals he is a genuine broker. He advises her to start the fire and create hype herself. So she designs dummy accounts to drum up buzz and tinker with the market mouth pot by unleashing motley bots. It is critically noted that every leak on the dark web gains an extra edge. The golden words of the game are: “Every clinical trial is a catalyst.” Therefore, it’s the massive pharma empire she locks her targets on.
The betting around the emergent CLEAN PTSD drug becomes a key plot trigger. She reveals to Bob her past as a survivor of sex trafficking. He promises her he will recommend her to his boss if she grants him a prime tip. He’d propose her as a market messiah. However, on the fateful day when she’s also supposed to be available to talk to the boss, there’s a massive power outage at her place caused by a thunderstorm. By the time power returns, too many hours have rolled by. Bob is seething when she manages to call him back, threatening to call it quits on their exchanges. She requests a final opportunity, which he concedes after some persuasion.
Trader (2023) Movie Ending Explained:
Does the protagonist get the broker’s job?
The final half-hour charts her detailed, incredibly deranged manipulation and orchestration of hijacking the market and social forces around the CLEAN drug in her favor. Jolted into an exhilarated, heightened state by the Bloody Sundae drug, she unearths one of the casualties enumerated in a top-secret list of the drug tested. She wheedles the dead young guy, John Hamilton’s mother (voiced by Ellen Dublin) and brother, Jack (voiced by Tim Dowler-Coltman). Both are incensed at not being delivered justice. She drives Jack on a dangerous path to become a shooter and takes out his fury. She tells Bob that CLEAN’s stocks will rise.
Meanwhile, she also gets in touch with the boss at Bob’s company, Colt Creative Capital. Bob’s real name is Robert Webb, and as she had suspected, Robert didn’t tell the boss anything about her. The boss dismisses her confident certainty that the CLEAN stocks will plummet and snaps at her, insisting online circle jerks have no real knowledge. On the fateful day, her predictions come true, affected through a horrid variety of means.
She leaks the mother’s phone conversation on the web, accusing the company of having a direct hand in her son’s death. It doesn’t convince the betters. The final straw is Jack bursting into the company buildings and launching into a rampaging, murderous spree. He ends up killing himself as well. Rapidly, the stocks decline, hitting exactly her predicted level. The boss calls her back and hires her as she promises to make his company recoup all their losses by next week. Therefore, she gets Bob’s job. The film ends with her burning down every document and every possession in the basement, and she finally makes it out.
