Shia LeBeouf plugs Wall Street, disses Indiana Jones

[HMG] – The Cannes film festival, which opened on Wednesday, is an actor’s best chance to schmooze reporters and put some ‘spin’ on their recent mistakes. And Shia LaBeouf’s sleepwalking stumble through Steven Spielberg’s most recent ‘Indiana Jones’ installment is no exception.

Shia, 23, played Mutt Williams in Indiana’s 2008 outing, “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.” And despite a worldwide gross of almost $800-million the 23-year old is not happy with the result;

“I feel like I dropped the ball on the legacy that people cherished,” he tells the Times. “If I was going to do it twice, my career was over. So this was fight-or-flight for me.”

“This” is Shia’s new flick, ‘Wall Street II,’ which opens in September. But Shia’s not done fretting over Indie just yet; He’s convinced Mutt’s life as an all-action hero was not visible on-screen.

“You get to monkey-swinging and you can blame it on the writer, or on Steven. But the actor’s job is to make it come alive and I couldn’t do it. Harrison wasn’t happy with it either,” he recalls.

Asked if this candid confession might upset the director, Shia could foretell the future;

“I’ll probably get a call. But he needs to hear this. He’s done so much great work there’s no need to feel vulnerable about one film. But when you drop the ball you drop the ball.”

But Shia’s well-known fondness for direct response became glaringly clear when he was asked if filming ‘Wall Street’ gave him any insight on what’s wrong with our financial system;

“You could make the market more transparent,” he mused. “You can’t have bank holding companies acting as hedge funds; It’s ridiculous. And it’s hard to have hope when you’ve got a $700-trillion debt to pay and there’s only $500 trillion of Gross Domestic Product. You take all the money in  the world…and you’re $200 trillion short. It’s scary, man! The average person fresh out of college owes $75,000 – with no job. My generation, it’s a scary situation.”

‘Wall Street’ opens on September 24. If you’re due out of college by then, what’s your take on Shia’s views?…

On a side note, while LaBeouf and his girlfriend Carey Mulligan huddled affectionately nearby on Friday in Cannes, director Oliver Stone couldn’t help but reflect back to watching the two fall in love on set.

“It was all thanks to me,” Stone told PEOPLE, laughing, of the young costars’ “amazing and wonderful” romance during a lush party in the hills above Cannes, following the film’s premiere.

“You could see their chemistry right away, and it was pretty powerful,” the director said. “They were completely professional on the set, but there was no mistaking what was happening.”

“I was thrilled when I realized they were going to be an item,” he said. “It just made their scenes together all the better — especially the love scenes. Let’s just say it was no stretch for them.”