The Wolf of Wall Street

So funny. I liked this movie so much that I saw it twice in theaters. Very long, and it starts to drag a bit towards the end, but this movie is one helluva ride through the ups and downs of what everyone would like to achieve at some point in their lives. Not sure if Leo DiCaprio or Jonah Hill won any awards for this film, but if they didn't, they should have. My partner hates this movie because of the amount of nudity in it, but I absolutely love it.

My rating is more of a 4.5The Wolf of Wall Street is a 2013 American biographical crime black comedy film directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Terence Winter, based on the 2007 memoir of the same name by Jordan Belfort. It recounts Belfort's perspective on his career as a stockbroker in New York City and how his firm, Stratton Oakmont, engaged in rampant corruption and fraud on Wall Street, which ultimately led to his downfall.Before deciding to watch this film and maybe important to ask yourself: what is my idea of entertainment, and what am I expecting when I watch a biographical film? The Inception and release of this film takes on a new challenge in that it attempts to make the life of people that are out of touch with reality more relatable to your average audience member. Not only this, but it also carries the weight of making the art of stock broking particularly interesting (at the very least, entertaining enough to be watched for 3 hours!) when there is a mysterious aura surrounding this profession to begin with.‘Wolf of Wall Street’ levels itself by catering to those that are competent and inept in regards to the ‘wall street way’ through particular choices made in the narrating department and contextually appropriate vernacular. Belfort speaks very much in the first person point-of-view that regularly breaks the fourth wall (in addition to using jargon) when discussing the specifics about his trade, but doesn’t veer off into territory that would otherwise be cumbersome (and, not to mention, potentially wordy). In contrast to this, characters use language that is expected and commonplace (which, just a heads up, is rather vulgar) and humanizes situations and conversations that otherwise would be boring and more-or-less lackluster. Offensive? Possibly. Entertaining? Couldn’t be more so.The “accuracy” of this movie has always been up for speculation, but viewers should know that the author of the novel this film is based off of (Belfort) didn’t just approve of the way he was portrayed here: He was on set giving his feedback as filming was underway. It is because of this (And, through the use of publicly accessible sources) that even the most outlanding parts - like, when Belfort crashes his helicopter while intoxicated - have some amount of documentation substantiating these events regardless of how far fetched they might be. There is some speculation regarding the narration of certain events (even in the book), but we must remember that Belfort is ultimately a stock broker at heart: can we really expect him to sell his story to unsuspecting audience members without bolstering a few details here and there? I digress. . . . .On the surface the plot and entertainment value is rather clear cut; it’s a recount of one man’s experience during the most objectively successful period of his life. It is, however, i useful to read between the lines and accept this as a reflection on themes and nuances that drive human behavior in the first place. Firsty, there’s a rather pungent irony surrounding the amount of control Belfort has on his life, and it is almost as if to say that that power and greed is only a stone’s throw away from indifference and frigidity. Perhaps even more importantly, this film goes to show: You can put a suit on your insecurity, but you sure as heck can’t make it walk.This film and its coinciding novel have been critically acclaimed as suggestions of how people shouldn’t behave (“A Don’t Do Story”) when investing in the same type of work as Belfort, but I have to humbly disagree with this notion. At the end of the day his personality is rather flat, and little is done to meaningfully explore the complexity of his character even if only for a brief moment. There are rarely any scenes in which Belfort deeply ruminates about the potential costs of his actions, and by the end of the film he really hasn’t changed much from the character he is introduced as being at the beginning. I may never get the answer to this question, but I still can’t help but ask: In the end, was any of it worth it after all?Highly entertaining and unbelievably messy:I would recommend!

Martin Scorsese's marvelously entertaining "The Wolf of Wall Street" is one of those movies guaranteed to polarize viewers. It has been vilified as vulgar, sexist, obscene, immoral, disgusting, overly long, hedonistic and glorifying in its debauchery. Its controversial nature is evidence in its overall three star rating; some people love it and others hate it. Those that hate "Wolf of Wall Street" feel that the movie celebrates the life of crime while neglecting those who suffered from it.But those detractors have missed the point. "The Wolf of Wall Street" is supposed to be vulgar, long and hedonistic because that's how the characters are. Far from glorifying the corrupt lifestyle of a pawnbroker, Scorsese shows us just how sick and perverted it is. Scorsese isn't the kind of director that's going to have characters spew banal dialogue on how wrong it is for pawnbrokers to perform pump and dump scams; he just presents it. That's not moral irresponsibility; that's great film making. Why tell it when you can simply show it?Like many of Martin Scorsese's movies, the main characters in "The Wolf of Wall Street" are ambiguous antiheroes who are neither warm or likable (and any pawnbroker that screws over victims is hardly likable), but have a snake-like fascination about them that just grips your attention. Many of the actors, particularly Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill and Rob Reiner, are given the difficult task of making these repellent characters attractive and they succeed in spades. Hill is particularly outstanding as Donnie Azoff and the sequences where he is flashing his private parts, terrorizes an employee by eating his fish and then makes fun of an associate for sucker punching him demonstrate that there's more to Hill as an actor than many people believe. Also excellent is Kyle Chandler as the shrewd FBI agent out to bring Belfort down and there's a riveting sequence where on Belfort's yacht where he tries to bribe the agent into joining him.Equally noteworthy, however, is Matthew McConaughey's memorable cameo as the man who ultimately gives Belfort the tools to succeed by adopting sex and cocaine. His character appears for only a few minutes, but those are very pivotal minutes. Everybody who saw this movie knows what I'm talking about and if you don't, let me help you: "hoohuuum hoohuuummm hooo hooum hooo hoouuumm" (while pounding my chest).The movie, of course, is riotously funny, probably the funniest movie Scorsese has made since "After Hours", but it's a different kind of funny. What offended many viewers was that the film did not depict Stratton Oakmont customers having their lives destroyed by these materialistic pigs and they even felt the movie laughed at their misfortune. But the joke isn't on the victims; it's on the characters. Or to be more precise, the joke is on us, but the VENOM is on them for disregarding human life. There's a hilarious and disturbing sequence where Belfort suffers a cerebral palsy at the moment he finds out the FBI is tapping his house phone. Not only does he have a hard time getting to his car, but when he gets home, he struggles to grab his house phone and save a patron from choking on a snack. It's a frighteningly hilarious sequence because here's a guy who ripped off millions of dollars from investments and this is where he's spending it on. And anyone who had doubts that DiCaprio had a sense of humor should check this sequence out.At first glance, one expects a spiritual successor to Oliver Stone's more conventional "Wall Street", but if you expect a typical crime drama where the villain gets away or achieves redemption, you don't know Scorsese. This is the same filmmaker that showed us the seductive allure and fatal consequences of operating in a crime organization ("Mean Streets", "GoodFellas", "Casino"), paralleled cops and robbers as if they were two sides of the coin ("The Departed"), expressed the ugliness of sexual jealousy and machismo behavior ("Raging Bull") and showed how social media can turn psychopaths into heroes ("Taxi Driver") and even celebrities ("The King of Comedy"). Scorsese is both attracted and repulsed by these antiheroes and their dark side and it's no doubt he is every bit as disgusted by their actions as many of the people who hated this movie were."Wolf of Wall Street", far from immoral, is a very moral movie. It's clear that, by the end, Belfort still hasn't learn his lesson and continues to have a good life while everyone else he has scammed and betrayed is suffering to this very day. Instead, the moral journey is for us, to persuade us to not follow the lifestyle of these despicable, heartless deadheads who wallow and are destroyed by their own wretched excess and hubris. That's why "Wolf of Wall Street" demands to be seen and why the critics who assailed the film should watch it again to get the message.

I highly recommend.