Greed is all-pervasive and is held as life’s greatest virtue. Jordan’s ferocious inspirational speeches to his troops are among the film’s highlights, and the boss gets his greatest satisfaction from seeing the men (there are a few women) go ape with abandon at the prospect of their unethical practices reaping ever-escalating profits. Even when the firm grows to a thousand employees, the office filled with white-shirt-and-black-tied men more often resembles a mosh pit more than a place of business. It’s the start of something very, very big.įrom the outset, the parties and celebrations are totally debauched throughout, Scorsese pushes to the outer limits of the R rating (the film did require cutting to avoid an NC-17) in showing drug excess perhaps outdone only by Scarfaceand rampant sex, including in the workplace. Married and desperate for any income, he sets up a few desks in a Long Island garage, slaps the “classy” name of Stratton Oakmont on it and instructs a few young guys, most notably eager acolyte Donnie Azoff ( Jonah Hill), in the high-pressure art of selling penny stocks to suckers over the phone. Jordan has just gotten a taste of Wall Street life when Black Monday hits in October, 1987, sending him back to square one. It’s safe to say, however, that, at 71, the director is still making the films of a much younger man and is showing no signs of turning toward a more reflective, meditative style.Įffectively setting both the iniquitous attitude and the adrenalized acting style that will predominate is Matthew McConaughey, who, in his one big scene as a successful drug-drink-and-sex-addled broker, tutors the 22-year-old greenhorn Jordan ( DiCaprio) at a very funny lunch on what it takes to become a whiz in the money business. Scorsese’s point of view toward these characters, and his reasons for returning to them time and again, could profitably be analyzed further. VIDEO: Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio Finally Open Up About ‘Wolf of Wall Street’ It’s the gangster formula, here applied to white collar types. This approach works on the viewer by providing what feels like privileged access to individuals you’d abhor in real life but who, as inhabited onscreen by charismatic actors, are undeniably fascinating for how they get away with so much for so long.
Wolf is wallpapered with first-person narration, takes pains to explain how the business and scams work and positively wallows in the pleasure of elaborating the minutiae of self-gratification through criminal and otherwise depraved activity, the immorality and illegality of which have been totally waived away by the characters. The format of Terence Winter’s ever-percolating script closely resembles those of two major Scorsese films about underworld figures, Goodfellasand, especially, Casino. He’s now a popular motivational speaker, his fee no doubt about to soar. Indicted in 1998 for securities fraud and money laundering, Belfort got off easy by ratting out many associates to the FBI and served but a brief sentence in a country club-like prison facility where his bunkmate was Tommy Chong. A working-class New York kid, Belfort enthusiastically embraced the cutthroat Wall Street ethos in his early 20s and eventually formed a respectable-sounding company, Stratton Oakmont, featuring a boiler room ethos among employees that was thoroughly drilled in their leader’s take-no-prisoners sales approach.
Wolf of wall street full movie movie#
Without a doubt, Paramount’s sybaritic, three-hour Christmas Day release will divide audiences, but the now five-film DiCaprio-Scorsese collaboration should continue to yield pretty strong returns commercially.Īlthough never the household name he’ll now become with a big movie made about him, Jordan Belfort was nonetheless emblematic of the unrestrained financial shenanigans of the final years of the American century, when the idea of any consequences for lid-off monetary opportunism seemed unthinkable (it’s quite likely that Wolf could be a giant hit in China, Russia and other markets where the spectacle of American irresponsibility will be most appreciated). DeMille, while the hopped-up visuals, editing and music feel like the stylistic equivalent of doubling up coke and Viagra.
At the same time, the dramatic strategy of titilating an audience with salacious behavior for 90 percent of the time, only to deliver a wages-of-sin message at the end, is older than Cecil B.
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