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With his jet-black hair and shark-like intensity, Belfort might be compensating for some great pain from his past, but the film never reveals what that might be, consciously eschewing any attempt at creating empathy for the character.
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In his previous collaborations with Scorsese, DiCaprio has often played tormented or troubled characters, and his portrayal of Belfort shows plenty of the darkness that was present in his performances from The Aviator and Shutter Island. The filmmakers don’t criticize this lifestyle, however - instead, they present Belfort’s worldview without commentary, trusting the viewer to recognise the bizarre, almost Fellini-esque excess on display.
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(To set the tone, the movie opens with him snorting cocaine off a hooker’s ass.) But this numbing effect may be part of Scorsese’s strategy: After three hours of film, which spans roughly 10 years, we feel as if we’ve been immersed in a sick lifestyle that’s cut off from the morals and realities of normal behaviour. There’s a repetition in the movie’s mission to show us just how deplorable Belfort and his ilk were, bombarding the audience with scenes of his insane wealth and detestable behaviour.
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(When we see females around the offices, they’re usually half-naked prostitutes servicing the men, and indeed Scorsese had to trim some of the film’s sexual content to avoid an NC-17 rating.)Īdapted from Belfort’s book by Terence Winter - who created the TV series Boardwalk Empire, which Scorsese executive produces - The Wolf Of Wall Street oversells its milieu’s rampant avarice. With very few women in sight, Stratton Oakmont is depicted as a nightmarish frat-house environment in which machismo dominates. But where Goodfellas had harsher life-or-death stakes because of the violent, dangerous men at its centre, The Wolf Of Wall Street is pitched as a satire, revelling in Belfort and his colleagues’ materialistic, alpha-male hedonism. But Belfort’s escalating wealth - which is accompanied by rampant drug use and a predilection for hookers - raises the suspicions of Denham (Kyle Chandler), an FBI agent who begins investigating Belfort’s shady business practices.Ĭomparisons to Goodfellas are inevitable and appropriate: Both films are based on real people who serve as the narrator and main character in their stories, guiding us through their lawless worlds until their inevitable downfall. Reinventing himself as a seller of seemingly insignificant penny stocks, Belfort founds Stratton Oakmont, a brokerage house that quickly becomes incredibly successful, essentially by conning unsophisticated clients into buying worthless stocks. Expect good reviews and awards play to contribute to sturdy theatrical grosses well into the new year.ĭiCaprio plays Belfort, who got hooked on the adrenaline rush of working on Wall Street in his 20s, only to watch the firm where he was employed collapse during the stock market crash of 1987.
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The lengthy running time may hurt box office some, but high visibility and a glitzy storyline that parades shameless Wall Street excess should help considerably. Opening December 25 in the US, this Paramount offering boasts considerable star power thanks to DiCaprio, not to mention the cachet of Oscar-winner Scorsese behind the camera. But those shades of déjà vu don’t diminish from this movie’s sober recounting of the greedy, remorseless monsters who have cataclysmically altered the country’s (and the world’s) financial landscape. The Wolf Of Wall Street can’t entirely escape a feeling of familiarity - both because Scorsese has pursued familiar terrain before and because this is his fifth film with star Leonardo DiCaprio. The Wolf Of Wall Street feels like a rehash of one of Scorsese’s favourite themes - people’s willingness to embrace crime to attain the American dream - but here there’s more anger and ambiguity in the telling. Based on Jordan Belfort’s memoir of his time working on Wall Street, this dark comedy rubs our nose in its amoral tone for three hours, producing a luridly watchable, often funny tale of the rise and fall of an unscrupulous young broker in the 1980s and ‘90s. Goodfellas without the guns, The Wolf Of Wall Street finds director Martin Scorsese once again essaying an epic on American corruption, except this time it’s in the land of stockbrokers instead of mobsters.