Content area
Full Text
Cover story
The sleepy-eyed guy isn't the type who immediately commands attention. But as Giovanni Ribisi builds a character bit by painstaking bit on screen, he becomes increasingly mesmerizing.
The Valley-raised actor can already claim a remarkably diverse body of work at the age of 25. Ribisi has proven equally adept at searing drama (as the dedicated medic in Steven Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan") and crack character comedy (as Lisa Kudrow's zonky, parenthood-obsessed brother on the smash sitcom "Friends"). He's convincingly played mentally challenged ("The Other Sister") and creatively eccentric when nothing else creative was going on around him (last year's "Mod Squad" feature debacle).
And now, the sweet-tempered, unfailingly polite young family man is about to show you why you should never, ever trust him with your money.
"The Boiler Room," opening Friday, offers Ribisi his biggest opportunity yet to strut his versatile stuff. He plays an intelligent but wayward New Yorker, Seth Davis, who's torn between his desire for the approval of his harsh judge of a father (Ron Rifkin) and his talent for making quick, illegitimate bucks. A college dropout, Seth does all right running an illegal casino in his apartment. But when a chance to become a stockbroker presents itself, he jumps at the chance to make even more money in a way his father won't criticize.
Except ... the brokerage Seth trains at is a chop shop, a high- pressure, cold-calling outfit dedicating to selling suckers essentially worthless securities. As Seth learns to excel at working the phones and exploiting his faceless "clients' " greed and fear, he also discovers that he might have the one thing neither he nor his heartless colleagues need: a conscience.
"I wanted to show Seth becoming this other kind of person, whether it be more confident or, the other side of that coin, more decadent," says Ribisi, dressed like a millionaire in a four-button suit jacket and matching gray shirt and tie. "Him starting to hate himself more but being caught on this tidal wave of success. He doesn't know what's happening or if he's doing the right thing, and I tried to keep my attention on his progression into that." Seth was also a...