The Wolf of Wall Street

Were you ever at a party or a bar or where you were sober or mostly sober? The people around you are drunk as hell and they are super fun and amusing. At least for a little while. Perhaps for the first two and a half hours, or so. Then you just want to get the hell out of there as quick as you can because amusing drunks turn to sloppy and annoying drunks real quick. If I had one criticism of Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street, it would be that. It's perhaps a bit too long. We could have done with one less scene of debauchery. There are two scenes in particular that could have been cut completely, or at the very least trimmed. I did read an article online that tried to make the argument that the three hour running time further illustrates the point of the movie, which is all about excess. That's an interesting theory, but I still think the movie would have been a tad better if it was cut down just a tad.

That being said, The Wolf of Wall Street is a goddamn great film. It's not about wolves, or even Wall Street really. This movie is about drugs. Or more particularly, addiction - addiction to drugs, addiction to sex, but mostly addiction to money. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Jordan Belfort and when we meet him he's young and impressionable, fresh faced and eager to please. At lunch with his very first boss and mentor (Matthew McConaughey, in the movie for only about twenty minutes, but I'll be damned if he doesn't steal every one of those twenty minutes), he refuses to drink alcohol, wonders how his boss can snort coke at lunch and then go right back to work. Flash forward a few years, and Jordan is running his own firm, doing a lot of shady, questionably moral / legal dealings and getting ridiculously, crazy, stupid rich. Like, so rich that he at one point wads up a hundred dollar bill and throws it in the garbage. He has so much money he doesn't know what to do with it all. So he gets himself a trophy wife. And a fancy mansion. And a lot of cars. And a yacht. And a helicopter. And a pretty outrageous drug habit (he claims he does so many drugs in one day that he could treat all of Manhattan for a month). The parties and the brazen disregard for any sort of normal life is all so outrageous that you wouldn't even believe it... if it weren't all absolutely true. And it is. Every thing that happens in this movie is true, which makes it all the more crazy. Eventually, Jordan gets what's coming to him, but not before he sleeps with tons of hookers, throws a midget at a human sized dart board, takes an orgy filled trip to Vegas and manages to sink a boat off the coast of Italy. This movie is wild!

With the exception of The Departed, Leonardo DiCaprio has never, never been better. I read an article where the author suggested its because he isn't needy, and has no desire to have the audience like his character. Maybe this is true. I think it's because he's never been so free. When was the last time DiCaprio looked like he's having fun in a movie? He is completely uninhabited, going places he has never gone before. He dances (and the ten or fifteen seconds where he dances at his wedding are, I think, the best goddamn ten seconds in all of film in the entire year)! He does physical comedy! He struts around and preens like the cock of the walk! He is having the time of his life playing this despicable douchebag and he's so unbelievably charming that you almost want Jordan to get away with all the terrible things he's done. Almost. DiCaprio isn't the only stand out. Jonah Hill is pretty superb as well, as Jordan's right hand man, a wasp-y weirdo who is perhaps a bit wilder even than Jordan. He absolutely nails the role. He's also never been better. Other stand outs include Margot Robbie as Jordan's volatile trophy wife, Jean DuJardin as a slick Swiss banker and Kyle Chandler as a straight arrow FBI agent. This is a cast of hundreds, and everyone nails it.

Now let's talk Martin Scorsese, because dude is 71 years old. He's already made his masterpieces. I wouldn't blame him one bit if he retired and spent five days a week golfing. But somehow he's making movies like he still has something to prove. He's making movies like a 28 year old fresh out of film school. He's making movies with more balls than kids half his age, or a third of his age. This movie has so much energy, is such a non-stop party that it's almost hard to believe it was directed by someone who is in his seventies. But Scorsese, more or less, showed absolutely everyone else who was boss with this movie. No one else is even close to him in terms of directing this year. There's him, and then everyone else. He is such a master of his craft that he manages to not let this movie go too far. Last week, I talked about David O. Russell ripping off Goodfellas, but letting the movie go too over the top. There was a big chance with that happening with The Wolf of Wall Street, but it never crosses that line. Scorsese keeps it in check, and keeps things from going into that campy zone.

I know I just spent three paragraphs praising the hell out of The Wolf of Wall Street, but keep in mind, it's not for everyone. Four people walked out of the theater that I was in, even before the halfway mark. This movie is absolutely brazen and wild and out of control. Jonah Hill masterbates! All the orgies! Leonardo DiCaprio snorts coke off a hookers ass, and later, Margot Robbie's tits! Speaking of, so. much. nudity. All the nudity. Plus, they say variations of f**k something like 560 times, according to IMDB (I don't know whose job it is to count). So, The Wolf of Wall Street may not be your cut of tea, but if you can take the craziness, it's definitely one of the best, most outrageous, ballsiest movies of the year.

Grade: A-