A film
review by Steven Rea, for The Inquirer, December 23, 2013.
Been
there, done that.
As
thrilling a filmmaker as Martin Scorsese
continues to be, and as wild a performance as Leonardo DiCaprio dishes up as its morally bankrupt master of the
universe, The Wolf of Wall Street seems almost entirely
unnecessary. A story of stockbroker rapacity in the anything-goes ‘90s? Cocaine
and hookers? Fast cars and fancy yachts? Trophy wives and pesky feds?
For
three hours.
Really?
Adapted
from the best-selling memoir by Jordan
Belfort, the Bronx-born trader whose pump-and-dump
schemes and penny-stock frauds made him millions - leaving duped investors with
busted bank accounts - The Wolf of Wall Street tracks the rise
and fall of its merrily debauched antihero, from his brief stint at an
old-money brokerage house to his drug-fueled glory days as the CEO of an epic
con.
Yes,
there’s a prison sentence at the end of the road. But Scorsese and his
screenwriter, Terence Winter, pretty
much shrug that off for what it was: 22 months in a country club ringed by
barbed wire.
Moral of
the story (did we say the movie was three hours long?): Crime pays. As long as
you believe in yourself, and convince other people likewise, it doesn’t matter
how many rules are broken, dreams smashed, lives destroyed.
Pass the
Quaaludes, why don’tcha?
So, even
though it’s kind of fun watching DiCaprio go kablooey, shimmying around in his
$2,000 suits and bellowing boiler-room battle cries (and that knee-walking exit
from the country club, a surreal DUI episode - amazing!), it’s also
depressingly predictable.
Joining
Scorsese’s go-to star (this is the director and DiCaprio’s fifth collaboration)
are Jonah Hill, playing a
fictionalized, wacko version of Belfort’s right-hand man; Matthew McConaughey as a Wall Streeter who mentored a young, green
Belfort (key advice: masturbate a lot); Rob
Reiner as Belfort’s proud pop; and Margot
Robbie as the blond bombshell with the Brooklyn accent whom Belfort
jettisons his first wife for.
The
whole bunch of them are good. So is the music, and the cinematography. A-list
all the way, baby.
The
Wolf of Wall Street is
an orgiastic love song to rampant excess. Maybe it’s ironic – it’s certainly
hallucinogenic - but it feels unhealthily worshipful at times, too. That last
shot of the poor mug of an FBI guy, played by Kyle Chandler, on his grim subway commute?
He’s the
sap in this story, he’s the sucker. There’s no nobility there and little in the
way of upward mobility, either.
Is The
Wolf of Wall Street really that obvious? I’m afraid
so.
Labels:
biography, comedy, crime, drama, satire
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