Review: The Wolf of Wall Street

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie & Kyle Chandler

Director: Martin Scorsese
In a few words...: The incredible rise and fall of Wall Street banker Jordan Belfort, from his humble beginnings as a junior broker through to the crimes that made him the subject of a major FBI investigation.
 
Rating: 9.5/10 

Beware: SPOILERS AHEAD

 

Last night, on the way home from the advanced screening of The Wolf of Wall Street, I thought about exactly what the film was, what I’d seen on the screen over not-quite three hours. 

For one thing, it’s extraordinary filmmaking. Martin Scorsese is an out-and-out genius. There’s no doubt about that. He’s put together an incredible film, somewhat loosely based on the bestselling autobiography of the same name, stacking the movie version of Jordan Belfort’s unlikely rise and enormous fall with brilliant actors, from Leonardo DiCaprio on down. It was well-directed, well-written, outrageously funny at times, and painfully real and very confronting at others.

Yet, the thing that hit me the hardest after leaving the cinema was that I’d just spent the best part of three hours watching a film about people I didn’t really like. How could you? Maybe you’re jealous of them making somewhere in the vicinity of fifty million a year, and getting to do the things – women, drugs, parties, holidays in fabulously exotic locations, more women and even more drugs – but, at the end of the day, most of the characters on the screen were crooks. 

They were as guilty as sin on so many dozens of counts, not least of which was smuggling a huge amount of money, though not particularly remorseful until their own heads were on the chopping block. They lied, cheated, scammed, stole, smuggled and laundered, lured to do so by the atmosphere of Wall Street, by wanting to get even richer, until it became their undoing.

Chief amongst them is the man they knew as the Wolf: Jordan Belfort (DiCaprio), a man wholly consumed with greed, and a mostly-unlikeable man as a result. He had nothing as a kid, rose out of the ashes of Wall Street’s Black Monday, made his brokerage firm Stratton-Oakmont into one of the biggest and most notorious firms of it’s kind and it’s day on Wall Street (mostly for the atmosphere of drugs and women, it seems; it’s a small miracle that Belfort is still standing, with all the drugs he did), and later gained a giant chunk of infamy courtesy of being arrested by the FBI for all manner of financial crimes. 

No doubt, Belfort’s rise was incredible – the guy apparently could sell ice to an eskimo – but his fall should serve as a cautionary tale. Everything he did was for the almighty dollar, and in the process he cost himself friends and, ultimately, his second marriage. Even so, you almost feel sorry for Belfort. DiCaprio is that convincing, stealing every single scene he’s in, and has the same charisma that the real Belfort probably oozed, too. Not to mention the gift of the gab. It wasn’t hard to see why his employees, Strattonites, as he called them, pledged their allegiance to him like they were soldiers in a communist army, all striving for Wall Street success, nearly always in a blatantly unethical manner.

DiCaprio was so good that I wanted to cheer for him when he was wrecking cars, manipulating people, swearing like a trooper and, worst of all, basically screwing over the United States Government and dozens of people investing small fortunes in stocks that were never going to go anywhere except down the toilet in a real hurry. It’s quite horrifying, actually: the lies spun by Belfort and his people to move stocks and make money.

The lifestyle these guys led is the stuff of legend, and it was vividly depicted at various junctures in the film. They rip people off, launder money, smuggle money, swear, snort coke at any random moment they feel like it (even during the middle of the working day), sleep with women of all kinds (mostly prostitutes, expensive ones), pop Quaaludes and wreck boats that cost more money than I’m going to make in a year or two. No big deal. Another day in the life of a Wall Street banker, right?

Until the FBI comes calling, of course. Friday Night Lights star Kyle Chandler is brilliant as Federal Agent Patrick Denham, the straight-shooting Bureau agent whom Belfort tried to bribe. Events transpire, and it's Denham who represents Belfort's eventual downfall, the reason he spent nearly three years in federal prison, forced to wear a wire to incriminate friends at Stratton Oakmont and losing his wife and children en route. There went Belfort’s life, unraveling in a horrifyingly spectacular chain of disastrous events. Or comeuppance, depending on which way you look at it.

Jonah Hill, an actor I never really thought was all that brilliant, has a career-defining turn as Belfort’s offsider and close friend, Donnie Azoff. Most of his funniest scenes are when Azoff (loosely based on a real character) is under the influence of one drug or another. Let’s face it: this was most of the film. Matthew McConaughey had a cameo as Belfort’s first wacky boss, Mark Hanna, and was genius. What would a movie featuring Belfort and Hanna together for three hours have been like? Off the chain, no doubt.

Australia’s Margot Robbie was brilliant as Belfort’s second wife, Naomi. The much-publicised nude scene came and went – and was hilarious – and Robbie kept up her strong performance, right ‘til the end. You could see her becoming more conflicted as the film went on, and the scenes where she finally asked Belfort for a divorce were some of the best of the entire three hours. What came after that was shocking and real, Ground Zero for Belfort, who went from nothing to everything and back to nothing again.

The Wolf of Wall Street was that in a nutshell, the story of a guy who was once treated like a god in the New York Financial District before a spectacular fall from grace that, you could argue, had been a long time coming and was well-deserved. You could argue, too, that DiCaprio and Scorsese have made the film of their lives – the perfect cautionary tale to stepping over the line in pursuit of riches; a window into how Wall Street can be like an irresistible drug – and you wouldn’t get an argument from me.

Film-making at it’s best. Go and watch it as soon as you can. You might not like the characters very much towards the end, but you’ll laugh, recoil in horror, shake your head, and recognise the brilliance that’s on the screen there for you to experience. Scorsese's finest achievement.