The Wolf of Wall Street

Film (2013)
Directed by Martin Scorsese

With Leonardo DiCaprio (Jordan Belfort), Jonah Hill (Donnie Azoff), Margot Robbie (Naomi Lapaglia), Matthew McConaughey (Mark Hanna), Kyle Chandler (Agent Patrick Denham), Rob Reiner (Max Belfort), Jon Bernthal (Brad), Jon Favreau (Manny Riskin), Jean Dujardin (Jean Jacques Saurel), Joanna Lumley (Aunt Emma), Cristin Milioti (Teresa Petrillo), Christine Ebersole (Leah Belfort), Shea Whigham (Captain Ted Beecham), Katarina Cas (Chantalle), P.J. Byrne (Nicky Koskoff -‘Rugrat’), Kenneth Choi (Chester Ming), Brian Sacca (Robbie Feinberg – ‘Pinhead’), Henry Zebrowski (Alden Kupferberg – ‘Sea Otter’)

Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) has a genius for selling, and after a halting start, pulls financial magic out of the hat, creating the firm Stratton Oakmont, which thrives on the manipulation of unsuspecting clients, selling them unreliable penny stocks at great profit to itself.

This very long film – 3 hours – does not drag for a moment. It is Scorsese in the old style, raw, unrestrained, not put-on, really great.

It would be hard to watch the continuing display of crude and manipulative behavior displayed in this film were it not so excellently done.

Leonardo DiCaprio embodies this character forcefully and with unrestrained bawdiness. I would not say this film is a pleasure to watch, but it is a pleasure to watch him create the role, and to see the evidence of Scorcese’s directorial acuity and Terence Winter’s authorial intensity. Capturing ultimate charm and ultimate indecency in one fell swoop, DiCaprio conveys an energy that overflows its banks, flooding everything in sight with financial shenanigans, depraved sexuality and endless drug taking. Hooking onto DiCaprio’s rear bumper, one gets quite a ride.

The film has the kind of unrestrained energy and vision that made Scorsese’s Goodfellas (1990) a classic. In fact, the worlds they portray – The Mob, and Wall Street shystering – though superficially quite different, in Scorcese’s hands begin to look quite similar. Everything, in both worlds, gets infected by the rationalized madness they embody. The Mob’s relentless justification of murderous vendetta and the Wall Street renegade’s justification of financial manipulation become, in Scorsese’s lens, cousins through too-easily finessed moral compromise.

The quality of unrestraint and bestiality in any variety of forms calls to mind the sorts of indulgences of Romans in decline portrayed in Federico Fellini’s Satyricon (1969). In Fellini’s film, the grotesqueries are caricatured, which makes them all the more vivid. Here, there is equal caricature, and it seems equally appropriate. What is great in both portrayals is that the over the top and no hold barred characterizations are germane to the themes. They are blown up, larger than life, and entirely believable.

Jonah Hill (Donnie Azoff) somehow makes nerdiness into saleable showbiz real estate. He did it effectively in the films Knocked Up (2007), Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008), and memorably in Moneyball (2011) as the genius who computerized the success of the Oakland Athletics and changed the face of baseball, and he has done it again and again.

Matthew McConaghey (Mark Hanna), along with a fabulously ill-fitting hairpiece, has an unforgettable cameo. He, with DiCaprio as his new trainee panting like an earnest little dog, gives weird irony a whole new financial-industries spin. His amazingly goofy grin and verved-up hype fit right in with Scorsese’s desired tone, a seeming mixture of irresponsible business, wild sex and caricature all rolled into one.

Rob Reiner, now usually a director himself, shows up as Max Belfort, the ethically ambiguous father of the DiCaprio’s Jordan Belfort. Though the family relations do not exactly shine through in the faces, Reiner shows enough easy resistance to scruples to enable one to stretch the belief that DiCaprio’s character is a young Jewish financier and that Rob Reiner’s Max gave him life. On the other hand, if one steps back and takes a look, it might easily seem as though Jonah Hill’s Donnie Azoff and DiCaprio’s Jordan Belfort were switched at birth.

The impetus of the film seems to derive not only from its pure revelation of financial shenanigans and business unethics but, more than that, the way in which all of that drives, and is driven symbiotically, by sex and desire. When the financial balloon deflates with a legal pinprick, so does the tumescence of its proponents. Hype, energy, illegality, misrepresentation and sexuality are are woven inextricably in this wild romp of a tale.

It feels like Scorsese is back in his directorial driver’s seat. Some of his efforts in recent years have not been too thrilling, but this one knocks it out of the park.

– BADMan