The Wolf of Wall Street

When the Black Monday crash of 1987 costs young Wall Street stockbroker Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) his job, he takes to selling penny stocks in a boiler room. After realizing that these stocks have less regulation and allow for a higher commission, Jordan starts his own firm, Stratton Oakmont, to court upscale investors. Aided by unscrupulous salesman Donnie Azoff (Jonah Hill), Jordan skirts laws and regulations to turn Stratton Oakmont into a massive money-maker. As his ambition grows, so do his addictions, which threaten his marriage to Naomi (Margot Robbie) and attract the attention of FBI Agent Patrick Denham (Kyle Chandler).

Scripted by Terrance Winter from Belfort’s memoir of the same name and directed by Martin Scorsese, The Wolf of Wall Street, like many fixtures of the financial world it portrays, seems too big to fail. A-list talents can be found on both sides of the camera, and no one is slacking here. Despite this and the lure of its premise (Goodfellas meets Wall Street), this film about excess is often excessive and nearly collapses under its own weight.

The Wolf of Wall Street pulls no punches in depicting the decadent, amoral, misogynistic world of Stratton Oakmont. The hookers-and-blow cliché is present here, but cranked up past eleven. As a tour guide for this spectacle, DiCaprio is elastic, springing from king-of-the-world financial huckster to hopeless, out-of-control addict on the turn of a dime. Hill, usually known for playing the nice guy or the comic relief, convincingly portrays a character with almost no redeeming qualities. Robbie, an Australian newcomer, hides her native accent well, but her role marks Scorsese’s sad descent into self-plagiarism. As a blonde siren turned wronged spouse, Robbie’s character is Cathy Moriarty in Raging Bull and Sharon Stone in Casino all over again.

Some have accused The Wolf of Wall Street of glamorizing the lifestyle it is meant to harpoon. At first glance, it’s a hard charge to deny. The on-screen opulence shows that Scorsese hasn’t lost his sense of style, the soundtrack is engagingly eclectic (everything from Etta James and Bo Diddley to Billy Joel and The Lemonheads), and the profane script is often hilarious. Funny eye candy or not, however, the film makes it clear that Jordan’s non-stop hedonism comes at a high – and inevitable – cost. If his arrogance in literally throwing away money is hard to take, then so too is his desperate, feeble attempts to get himself home while incapacitated by Quaaludes.

If the film’s general coarseness is an inextricable part of its morality play, its length certainly is not. At 179 minutes, The Wolf of Wall Street is at least a half hour longer than it needs to be. The problem lies in neither in Belfort’s rise (which features a memorable Matthew McConaughey cameo as a slick, shameless mentor) nor his fall (sudden enough to be jarring, but not short enough to leave us feeling shortchanged) but rather in the plateau in between. We can tell, relatively early on in Stratton Oakmont’s ascension, what kind of person Belfort has become. The piling of extravagance upon extravagance is, at best, redundant.

When a director has done as much ground-breaking work as Scorsese has, his legacy becomes a burden. Were The Wolf of Wall Street a debut effort, it would be hailed for its audacity. Instead, it is easy to see it as a sign that an old master has lost a step. Either way, it’s a flawed film, but one with significant merits.

8/10