The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) – M. Scorsese

I stayed away from this film for a decade, perhaps because of its 3-hour length or maybe because of my general disinterest in Leonardo DiCaprio.  Also, I’m not a big fan of 1980s-styled greedy power-hungry capitalist jerks (I would say Gordon Gekko but I’ve never watched Wall Street).  But with time on my hands and a director like Scorsese, I decided to give it a try. And right out of the gates, I’m getting a very strong Goodfellas vibe (from the voiceover) – but perhaps just those scenes where Ray Liotta starts getting into drugs?  But wait, is Wolf actually a comedy?  Leo and stockbroker partner Jonah Hill are going way over the top – and so is Scorsese.  This could be a self-parody. The story echoes Goodfellas too: true story, life of crime, busted by the FBI, turn in your friends and write a book. We accepted the moral ambivalence of the gangsters in the earlier movie but never really identified with them because they were scary and violent.  Here, as I said, these guys are jerks – hard partying drug-users who use women for sex (cheating on their wives, even when chosen as trophies alone, such as Margot Robbie) and screwing over everyone who will trust them with a dollar. These are the kind of bros that we could do without.  But Scorsese pumps up the adrenalin, makes it all larger than life – and doesn’t quite indict us (or Leo) for finding it fun.  In the end, I’m not sure we should fault a director for repeating himself (particularly one like Scorsese whose output is so varied already) when it takes amazing technique to pull something like this off.  I just was just hoping for a bit of a message here rather than an anthem to bad boys (that is probably celebrated by today’s bad boys).