A couple of years ago much was made of the fact that Martin Scorsese had gone against his gritty roots to make a family picture when he directed the wonderful Hugo. Well, after that brief spell in wholesome waters he’s back to grown-up fare with a vengeance. The Wolf of Wall Street is the true if hard to believe story of Jordon Belfort the fraudulent stockbroker who in the 80s and 90s made obscene amounts of money and became a drug addict, before becoming a motivational speaker and ending up in jail.
The film can arguably be described as Scorsese’s most adult one yet as he captures Belfort’s and his cronies’ Caligula levels of debauchery. When a movie has so many orgy scenes that you lose count then you’d better make sure there are no kids in the room.
There’s a theory floating around the internet that The Wolf of Wall Street forms an unofficial trilogy with two of Scorsese’s previous works: Goodfellas and Casino. This makes perfect sense to me as all three films tread similar ground in a similar style. All three are true stories of a man’s rise and fall in increasingly legitimate forms of crime the mafia, legalised gambling and now Wall Street. The protagonists of all three films whether they be Henry Hill, Sam Ace’ Rothstein or Jordan Belfort are morally dubious characters who narrate their own stories often directly addressing the audience to talk them through their lives of crime.
Both Goodfellas and Casino were written by Nicholas Pileggi with input from Scorsese himself but The Wolf of Wall Street was instead penned by Sopranos and Boardwalk Empire writer Terence Winter and so has slight differences in tone to the previous instalments. The most obvious being how funny it is. Both Goodfellas and Casino were dramas that had moments of dark, dark humour (the vice/eyeball moment in Casino springs to mind) but Wolf is one funny moment after another from start to finish and is probably best described as a black comedy, or even a farce, with moments of drama.
The casting of Jonah Hill as Belfort’s accomplice Donnie drew raised eyebrows as people wondered if the renowned star of broad comedies like Superbad and 21 Jump Street had the acting chops for a major part in a Scorsese crime film. The truth is it’s more a case of Scorsese coming down to Hill’s level than Hill being raised to Scorsese’s. That’s not to take anything away from Hill’s performance which is creepily hilarious and fully deserving of his best supporting actor nom but Donnie, with his peroxide teeth and penchant for public masturbation is a broadly comic character and not dissimilar to what we’ve seen from Hill before.
Dicaprio’s performance is much more revelatory. Not that we don’t expect fantastic acting from the man but here the onetime teenage pinup seems to be completely stripped of ego and willing to appear as sinisterly depraved as possible. And if you’re a fan of Dicaprio’s arse then you’re in luck here; it’s on display so much it should get its own credit.
But as well as being funny both Donnie and Belfort are utterly hateful and despicable people. It’s surprised me to see some reviews saying that the film succeeds in making you care about its amoral subject while others have said that Scorsese should be ashamed for expecting the audience to sympathise with him and not condemning his horrific actions and lifestyle. It’s true that the film doesn’t take any kind of judgemental stance on Belfort but that’s to be expected because the story is being told from his perspective and he was apparently never troubled by a guilty conscience. It’s true that the film makes his antics look like fun, but then the life of an unrepentant millionaire drug and sex addict will always look like fun, especially when it’s captured by such a visionary storyteller as Scorsese.
But the genius of the film, and another thing that links it to Casino and Goodfellas, is that Scorsese simply presents Belfort’s story as he would tell it and then leaves it up to the audience to decide what they think of him. So it’s completely reasonable to find his outrageous and appalling deeds hugely hilarious but if you walk away thinking that Belfort is some kind of hero that really says more about you than it does the film. Personally, I found him to be a despicable weasel of a man right from the beginning. I laughed in disbelief at what he got up to but I found the greatest satisfaction in the film towards the end when his sordid ways, and Kyle Chandler’s FBI agent, start to catch up with him.
For a film that deals with excess of all kinds it’s appropriate, and knowing Scorsese probably deliberate, that it has such an excessively epic running time. In fact at nearly 3 hours The Wolf of Wall Street was quite heavy ordeal at the cinema, as the unrelenting sordidness got a bit much. But on DVD you can pause and take breaks to go and do something wholesome whenever the need takes you.
Overall Verdict: An audacious and outrageous black comedy that is hilarious from start to finish and will have you rolling with laughter while shaking your head in shocked disbelief. It may disappoint those hoping for another serious Scorsese crime epic but just proves that he can master any genre while still putting his unmistakable stamp on it.
Special Features:
The Wolf Pack behind the scenes making of
Running Wild the process of bring the story to the screen
The Wolf of Wall Street Roundtable Discussion with Martin Scorsese, Leonardo Dicaprio, Jonah Hill and Terrence Winter.
Reviewer: Adam Pidgeon