From breaking out as a teenage prostitute in Martin Scorsese’s seminal Taxi Driver to becoming a household name to snatching a pair of Academy Awards to her semi-retirement from acting to focus on directing, Jodie Foster’s career has seen many evolutions. As a director, The Silence of the Lambs actress has sharpened her craft exponentially over the years, veering from such trite family-friendly material as Little Man Tate and Home for the Holidays to more adult-oriented material such as Mel Gibson-starring drama The Beaver, itself a horrendous victim of terrible timing. Her latest feature is another confident step forward, its incisive themes and hard-R sensibilities informed by her tenure as a guest director for Netflix’s two biggest and most mature hits: House of Cards and Orange is the New Black. With Money Monster, Foster finally sheds the skin of an actress experimenting with the format and actualizes as an genuine director of note.

Much in the same way that Adam McKay took on Wall Street’s near limitless greed in Academy Award darling The Big Short, Foster injects a healthy sense of critique of the financial elite into the proceedings of Money Monster. The screenplay from Jim Kouf, Alan DiFiore and Jamie Linden plants what has become an almost in vogue modern distrust for American nuevo-aristocracy inside a high-stakes hostage situation, hoping to piece together a poppy thriller with some ideological heft. And though the resulting whip is admittedly frothy, it’s an admirable gesture to credits the audiences’ intelligence. To suggest that not all thrillers need be pea-brained is a worthy germ.

Jodie introduces us to Lee Gates, a self-absorbed financial news host played by George Clooney. The casting in Clooney is perfect; the 55 year old superstar is the epitome of playboy chic, thoroughbred stock bred to toothy perfection and spilling over with elitist condescension and faux charm. He thinks he has everyone fooled but even those closest to him find him a shade of insufferable. Not unlike ‘Mad Money’’s Jim Cramer, of whom the film is satirizing with plain-faced affront, Gates has resorted to shameless theatrics to engage his audience and boast ratings. He dances onto set in costume, flanked by two booty-popping beauties. He slings tv-ready buzzwords and unquantified hyperbole such as “The Stock Tip of the Millennium”. He even beats on a red button that spurs one goofy gif or another.

There’s a lot of artificial machismo to Lee’s pandering and even his long-time director Patty Fenn (Julia Roberts) is fed up with their soft-ball “journalism”. After a major $800M crash of a stock that Lee had recently labeled “safer than your savings account”, recursions arrive in the form of a lone gunman (Jack O’Connell). O’Connell’s embittered investor wants answers and he wants the cameras running while he gets them. With a gun to his head, Lee is strapped into an explosive vest and told that if doesn’t get to the bottom of the alleged “glitch” that caused such a prodigious valley in the stock price, he along with the rest of the studio will go down in flames.

Like many actors-turned-directors before her – perhaps most notable George Clooney – Foster showcases a robust fascination for showing off the behind the scenes elements of video production. From Patty’s earpiece handling of the events before and after her television show is turned into a live hostage takeover to the involvement and heroics of the camera and boom operators, Foster turns the camera back unto itself to reveal the wizard behind the curtain. The mirror reflection of a film crew filming a film crew is, for lack of a better word, neat.

The most impressive feature of all in Money Monster is the cast. Time spent under an explosive vest leads Lee’s cynicism to buckle and break, giving Clooney an opportunity to evolve the jackassery of a TV personality douche into a genuine human whose Grinch heart grows three sizes that day. There’s narrative convenience shrouded in Lee’s breakneck metamorphosis but the character work from Clooney lends it an earnest quality that can tend to escape the performer when he’s doing his whole “smarmy” thing.

Julia Roberts is game as a worn-out director, navigating a precarious situation while still administering her artful eye for good television. Her manicuring of the scene – she prompts a cameraman to push out to get better angles or shift to get the gunman out of the shadows – is among the funnier aspects in a film surprisingly capable with comedy. But none shine more than Jack O’Connell, whose disenfranchised shooter is very much flesh and bone; an everyman who’s run out of options and whose plight is remarkably familiar.

His rage is not unwarranted, violent though his actions may be, and Foster’s ability to win us over to his cause is praiseworthy, if a skosh manipulative. But this being both a hard-wrought germ of fizzy “grandma can come” entertainment and proletariat protest piece, it’s hardly an dominant offense. The consequent potpourri of poignant themes, engaging thrills and strong performances make Money Monster a magnetic piece of pop-adult entertainment. While a lesser film may have prettied the everyman plight up with a late stage miracle, Money Monster is content making practical, pragmatic narrative choices that ring true to the zeitgeist du jour. Well, most of the time.

CONCLUSION: ‘Money Monster’ won’t change the genre or leave a lasting impact but as far as semi-disposal adult entertainment goes, Jodie Foster’s fourth film serves as a strong reminder that thrillers need not rely on excessive explosions or exposition to be worthwhile. With a good measure of solid laughs and a well-diagnosed ribbing of the bourgeoisie class, Foster’s film also underscores how simply fantastic Jack O’Connell can be.