Director : Martin Scorsese
Cast Headliners: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie, Jon Bernthal, Matthew McConaughey
Original Release Date: December 25th, 2013
Ah, the stock market. The real Wall
Street is a high energy world of big money being moved around and many people
moving around huge rooms. As Michael
Douglas once said in a very similarly titled film however, “greed is good.” The Wolf of Wall Street both provides an often
heard of but seldom seen side of the stocks, as well as provoking some
interesting thoughts about what money can do to people.
Jordan Belfort is the main character
of the film, played by Leonardo DiCaprio.
The film’s plot uses some interesting time jumps, portraying Jordan’s
rise then fall then rise again through the world of the Wall Street stock
markets. His company Stratton-Oakmont
evolves along with him, going from something small and rough into an
empire. It is an empire built on lies
though. Jordan is not a good man at all
and is incredibly conniving, egotistical, and most of all greedy. For sure the main point of commendation
should be given to DiCaprio here. He is awesome, with incredible range and
charisma. He is just simply firey as he
plays Jordan falling into the vices of any rich businessman: sex, drugs, and
rock and roll with a massive emphasis on both of the first two. The film has a shocking amount of partying,
narcotic-isation, and fornication taking place.
But from the darkest of debaucheries to the most zany of shenangins,
DiCaprio lights up the screen with his words from this fascinating
character. He delivers strongly, but
the supporting cast isn’t too shabby either with the equally insane characters of
Mark Hanna (played in a unfortunately brief appearance by Matthew McConaughey),
Donnie(Jonah Hill), Brad Bodnick(Jon Bernthal) and many more. It seems that everyone in the cult of
personality that is built around Jordan at Stratton-Oakmont is a wild hedon,
and it makes for some great chuckles and a form of spectacle.
The humor comes from the great
dialogue, as expected from a Martin Scorsese film. Scorsese has created a fast-paced movie in
both its words and its filming. So many witty words are said in this movie,
with most conversations feeling heated as they should. It’s impressive that stocks, an arguably
boring subject, is made into a very thrilling experience, almost like a bank
robbery heist, fittingly so considering how Jordan manipulates his victims. There is also some great moments of extreme
insanity that must be seen, quaaludes are a hell of a drug as there’s this one
paticuliar part involving them that is an knee slapping outrageous display of
both Scorsese’s direction and DiCaprio’s acting.
The quality of Scorsese is felt but
that editing wasn’t one hundred percent perfect however. The Wolf of Wall Street was supposed to come
out a month before its original release date, apparently facing a problem of
having way too much content filmed. And
so to fix it, it was delayed to cut it down to improve it since the original
draft is said to have been over well over 4 hours long. The print in theaters
is at about an exact three hours, and it can be said that maybe more things
should have been trimmed. It seems like the “first part” of the plot
takes way longer than the exciting twists near the end, so while I don’t really
know what could have been done maybe that is because of some behind the scenes
work Scorsese had to juggle with. This
is only a minor grievance however, as all plot points are explained and
followed through. There’s just really “so much” to the film that it can be
overwhelming. An example would be many
nearly identical scenes of raucousness, we get the point Scorsese.
What this film is though is a solid
Wall Street story, and of this Jordan fellow. It is a mostly great example of
an “anti-hero.” It is held mainly up by Leonardo DiCaprio. It’s a long crawl, but by the end it is very
much worth it. 8.75 out of 10
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