Scorsese is a lot like Tarantino to me; I don’t like all the movies that everyone else seems to love. The last Scorsese movie I truly enjoyed was probably “Gangs of New York”, which I believe was also his first collaboration with DiCaprio. I’ve seen most of his other DiCaprio movies but none of them really grip me; they’re just long and seem to follow the same recipe of “riches to rags”. Sadly I didn’t feel like much was different with “The Wolf of Wall Street”, but it was definitely more entertaining than some of their other films.
If the movie made me feel anything, it’s that I’m glad I don’t deal with the stock market. I tend to say “enjoy fast-paced environments” on cover letters but there’s no way I’d survive in a pit. Of course this movie focuses on insider trading and illegal stock sales that wind up making the characters millionaires, when at first they barely had a pot to, you know, do stuff in. DiCaprio narrates the entire movie and sometimes breaks the 4th wall entirely, so in case you aren’t able to follow his visual spiral into drugs and bad, you’ll be able to listen to how poorly things are going. Honestly it just didn’t…do a whole lot that “Wall Street” didn’t do. In fact, I think DiCaprio’s character Jordan Belfort even mentions at one point that his idol was Gordon Gecko. So it’s your basic recipe of get-rick-quick schemes that go awry and then the awkward hour and a half of watching these characters struggle to hold on and survive, while continually shoving powder up their noses.
To it’s credit though, it wasn’t a “bad” movie, I did enjoy it. And by “enjoy” I mean that I wasn’t dying of boredom by the end as Scorcese’s movies tend to make me do. There are some excellent performances throughout the whole thing, namely by DiCaprio (who so far deserves the Oscar in my mind, but I haven’t watched all the movies yet), but also Matthew McConaughey who’s in the movie a whopping five minutes, Jonah Hill, Kyle Chandler, and Jean Dujardin. Jonah Hill especially dazzles, considering one of the first movies I ever saw him in was “Accepted” (which I still hold true to be an excellent flick), and is more than deserving of his Oscar nod. That’s the thing about Scorcese’s films, is that more than the cinematography or scenery, the acting is always impeccable so I’ve got to hand him that. Reading through the trivia I found out that the real Jordan Belfort was pretty happy with the outcome of the film, so that’s got to be a testament to some good film making.
Can’t say it would be bad to have a yacht though. I’m sure all of Scorcese’s cast members get one as a “Thank you.”
Honestly the strongest things to me that made it more “eh” than “awesome” were the constant drug use and T&A. I remember first realizing what separated PG-13 from R, and it just made me think that producers would watch a screener and say, “If we’re going to call this an R film, we need bucket loads of swearing and so many naked women you’d start to think it was normal.” Sadly Scorcese seems to have bought into this theory because most scenes contain one, if not both of these. A strong film should rely more on the story than naked bodies and drugs to entice viewers, but I’m not a ratings reader so who knows what drew people to see it. I don’t know, seems a lot of mobster movies these days contain these two things and they have a huge following, one that I’m not a part of, so I could be barking up the wrong tree. Oh well.
DIRECTOR’S CUT: Overall I was happy with the outcome and not sad that it took up three hours of my life. If it wins some statues, I won’t be disappointed.
FLICKCHART RATING: 694/2074
The Scene Collector 