THE WOLF OF WALL STREET

There were times that I felt THE WOLF OF WALL STREET was trying to bully me into liking it as it is so full of energy and striking visual moments and high volume acting.  It is a film that makes me conflicted as far as how to review it.

Martin Scorcese is one of my favorite directors of all time if not my favorite and WOLF is visually dazzling full of wild scenes that come and go quickly as well as excellent narration that brilliantly sets up these scenes and lays on the irony thickly.  The story is told well.  Despite the almost three hour length, I was never bored.

However, it is a hollow film.  Unlike in past Scorcese films, the connection is not made between the actions and any sort of moral absolute.  An FBI agent investigating Leonardo DiCaprio’s character is introduced but is not given enough to say or do and so never really becomes the moral center.  As a result, the film feels just like decadence for the sake of decadence with no theme to tie it all together other than excess and greed.

Leonardo DiCaprio is an actor I’ve never cared for.  He just doesn’t have the acting weight or the talent to pull off challenging roles.   One of the themes running through WOLF is that the character he’s playing, the real-life Jordan Belfort, was from a working class family not from a wealthy old money family but DiCaprio, despite his heavy Brooklyn accent, looks much more like a blue blood elitist than the ambitious and self-made narrator.  Many of the secondary actors especially the always noxious Jonah Hill and an overacting Rob Reiner are extremely annoying.

In DiCaprio’s favor, he’s working from an excellent script.  In particular, the sales pep talks he gives his brokers were realistic and funny.  

The wall to wall sex, multiple orgy scenes, prostitutes, gay sex, DiCaprio with a candle in his ass along with the copious drug use (I don’t think I’ve seen drugs used as much and their use explained in such great detail as in this film) are linked to the amoral business dealings of Belfort but we need more of an explanation of the connection.  Money laundering is shown in great detail but to what end?

Still, I was never bored and, as I noted earlier, this film is so well made that I hardly noticed my complaints until it was over.  Greed isn’t just good, it’s addictive and necessary to the act of making money itself.  Okay maybe that’s the movie’s moral center.  A movie for further thought and review (which by provoking this means THE WOLF OF WALL STREET was a success).