Review: THE WOLF OF WALL STREET

THE WOLF OF WALL STREET    (BIOPIC/COMEDY-DRAMA)
3 out of 4 stars
Directed by Martin Scorcese
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie, Kyle Chandler, Rob Reiner, Jean Dujardin, P.J. Byrne, Jon Bernthal, Matthew McConaughey, Jon Favreau
Rated R for sequences of strong sexual content, graphic nudity, drug use and language throughout, and for some violence.
Verdict:  Wildly unhinged, unnecessarily lengthy and incredibly depraved, THE WOLF OF WALL STREET is nonetheless an intriguing and nasty story about intriguing and nasty people, and achingly funny at times, but not for everyone. 
YOU MAY ENJOY THE WOLF OF WALL STREET IF YOU LIKED:
GOODFELLAS  (1990)
WALL STREET  (1987)
CASINO  (1995)
THE HANGOVER  (2009)
THE SOCIAL NETWORK  (2010)

THE WOLF OF WALL STREET is hugely reminiscent of one of Martin Scorcese's greatest (many might actually say "his greatest") films, 1990's GOODFELLAS.  Both films are about a rise and fall within a criminal empire, narrated by the main character with wry wit and justification, accompanied by the occasional mid-action freeze framing and self-reference.  However, THE WOLF OF WALL STREET is not on that GOODFELLAS level.  I'm reluctant to be very harsh about it though, because time has told us that Scorcese comedy gets better with age (see: THE KING OF COMEDY (1982)); heck, for that matter, so do a lot of his films initially thought of as lesser. 
Based on the autobiography by Jordan Belfort, THE WOLF OF WALL STREET tells the story of a young stockbroker who built a multimillion dollar stockbroking company through corrupt stock dealings.  Leonardo DiCaprio, in his fifth film with Scorcese, stars as Belfort, who arrives on the stockbroking scene at a prestigious company working under a raving drug/sex addict (Matthew McConaughey), before the events of "Black Monday" in 1987, causing the greatest dive in stock percentages since the Great Depression, force that company to close.  Desperate for work, Belfort finds a position at a dinky little penny stock boiler room, where he easily becomes a superstar in sales, coaxing the middle class into putting their life savings into his $0.01 stocks, while he earns a handsome 50% from each sale.  From there, he teams up with Donnie Azoff (Jonah Hill; it is so strange to see Jonah Hill and Leo DiCaprio busting each others balls on the same screen), a creepy WASP suburbanite, to found their own brokerage firm, Stratton Oakford, where Belfort personally trains his brokers to sucker in buyers of their garbage stock.  As business explodes, especially after a scathing article in Forbes magazine, dubbing him "The Wolf of Wall Street," Belfort leaves a trail of disaster in his wake, buying and doing whatever he wants with more money than he knows what to do with.  Eventually, his reckless activities catch the attention of the FBI, with a straight-arrow agent (Kyle Chandler) doggedly pursuing prosecution of Belfort for white collar criminality.

Kind of a strange combination, but hey, whatever works.

This is new territory for Scorcese, who has done comedy, especially black comedy, before, but nothing so extreme.  It's a terrifically funny film a lot of the time, but even in the midst of all the ludicrous debauchery that saturates the entirety of the three hour running time, I can't help but wonder what it would be like as a drama, at least like something closer to the tone of GOODFELLAS.  If these are things that happened in real life, than it wasn't actually that funny, but then again, there's also characters doing drugs out of hookers' butts.  In the first few minutes.
Speaking of which, this is yet another movie that has inexplicably been released with an R rating, despite being far, far better suited to the NC-17 rating that its makers worked so hard to avoid.  I don't have a problem specifically with the content itself, but it's exactly the sort of thing that the NC-17 rating is supposed to indicate to responsible adult viewers.  I'm pretty sure that I haven't seen a movie with this much nudity in it since Paul Verhoeven's SHOWGIRLS, or as much drug use since Danny Bole's TRAINSPOTTING.  Reportedly, at 506 counted, THE WOLF OF WALL STREET also has one of the highest "f-word" counts of any narrative film ever made, plus there's probably at least a half dozen "c-words" to boot, but the swearing doesn't bother me as much.  If it did, I'd be in a coma.
All of this attests to the fact that this is a story about really aberrant, abhorrent people, and that is something to be considered.  It's funny, but in reality, so, so dark, not to mention infuriating.

America- F*** Yeah!  -This message brought to you by Jordan Belfort.

I think I'll be better able to understand THE WOLF OF WALL STREET in at the very least a few years, because past experience tells me that I don't quite have it yet.  I didn't really "get" GOODFELLAS the first time that I saw it.  What I see in THE WOLF OF WALL STREET right now is a very funny, very undisciplined and coyly intriguing movie that offends nearly every sensibility.