Movie review: ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ explores a different American Dream

"The Wolf of Wall Street" is an exhilarating and hilarious portrayal of the life of Jordan Belfort.
And through telling the story of his life, it’s a new take on the culture and madness of the wealth created by Wall Street, as well as an examination of a different kind of American Dream.

 

Director Martin Scorsese, who has already worked many times with leading man Leonardo DiCaprio, draws upon the actor’s many talents and returns to the themes he has explored before.

 

We’ve seen DiCaprio as an over-reaching mad character. But in Belfort on Wall Street we get a twisted, compelling new main character who is both despicable and incredibly irresistible. 

 

The film opens with a flashy intro sequence where Belfort addresses the audience and gives us the skinny on how amazing his life is. We see the hookers and the house on the coast and the sports car (and a great visual gag) and the excessive drug use.

 

It sets the stage for the exuberance and over-the-top nature of the characters. They almost aren’t real people, but insane cartoon versions of what we imagine these crazy rich would be.

 

There’s probably a fair amount of invention, but the mere thought that this is based on a true story and there were people like this is pretty mind-blowing.

 

I find the tension between what we see these characters doing on screen and us who inhabit the rest of the world which these characters have such contempt for is one of the strengths of the film. 

 

Throughout this film, we will ask ourselves the question: wouldn’t we want to live like that? Wouldn’t we want that kind of money? What would we do if we were making a million dollars a week?

 

If we could afford everything we could ever desire, what would that make us? Would it make us monsters? And, perhaps, a more important idea, would we have to be monsters to make that kind of money?

 

What’s interesting about Jordan Belfort and his band of stock market misfits is that they are a bunch of middle- and lower-class guys on the hustle. They’re taking the kind of thievery of the ivy league banker types and making it their own.

 

Belfort’s journey starts at a major brokerage firm, but after a market crash, he finds himself in adverse circumstances. From those circumstances, he discovers the hustle that’ll make him rich as a trader, and builds a company around him that uses image and salesmanship to pull the wool over the eyes of investors and turn those in the company into the richest and most depraved people you can think of. 

 

And yet there is a kind of nobility and deluded heroism that these characters have. There are times in the film when you find what these characters are doing just downright disgusting or morally wrong. To live in such excess seems reprehensible. But then, these people inhabit a society that rewards what they do. And then there are genuine human moments when Belfort seems to have his heart in the right place and he manages to do something truly kind. 

 

There are so many layers, and such complexity at work in this film, that it will probably reward multiple viewings. The story alone is compelling. A bunch of misfits led by a middle-class wannabe with a twinkle in his eye, a golden smile, and non-stop charm hijack a system meant to make the rich richer.

 

This means that a bunch of guys who would have been losers slinging weed become hedge fund managers controlling airplanes filled with hookers and blow. What these guys do with their money, the way they make it, and the kind of mad society that allows all of that.

 

Then, there is the superior film-making that Scorsese employs. It’s a testament to the director’s skill that he brings out so much humor from this film. Though morally reprehensible, it’s also hilarious.

 

The humor can range from the ironic, to great visual humor, to slapstick drug sequences. Also admirable is Scorsese’s staging of the crazy trading floor. Sure, we’ve seen it before in films like "Wall Street", but never with the panache in this flick. 

 

Further, "The Wolf of Wall Street" makes a nice space in Scorsese’s oeuvre. Stylistically and thematically, it can be seen as an updating of "Goodfellas". Here, instead of the American Dream being pursued through being a mobster, we see it through the Wall Street crook. 

 

The beats and motivations of the characters are similar, but the scale of wealth is so much larger that it makes things even crazier. Isn’t it a great irony that the Wall Street crooks are even worse than Scorsese’s mobsters?

 

In the screening I attended, there was grumbling because of the film’s length. The movie clocks in somewhere near three hours. You won’t feel it though, because the film’s pacing is so sleek.

 

There are points later in the film, when the high highs of Wall Street life are behind the character, when things don’t move as smoothly. But then that’s the film making concessions to real events instead of favoring invention and a more easily-resolved story. For the most part though, these three hours are filled with compelling scenes that are packed with an undeniable verve. 

 

Thus far, "The Wolf of Wall Street" has been getting a lot of awards buzz. It’s deserved. This is a movie that tells a great story and is fun to watch. It isn’t exactly uplifting or a confirmation of the human spirit. But it is an exploration of a specific kind of life and the consummation and dissolution of a dream. Brilliant stuff. — JDS, GMA News