The Wolf of Wall Street

I've seen very few Martin Scorsese movies and despite those few being considered some of the greatest movies of their time, none of them have managed to impress me.

The Wolf of Wall Street is no exception.

Wolf of Wall Street may even be the worst of those movies if we're judging in terms of what it manages to do with it's runtime, cause this movie is way too long and spends what seems like 80% of it annoyingly dragging out conversations into dull irrelevant banter. The characters will be talking about a plot development and the conversation skews off into hiring midgets. And it's not even a funny conversation. Deadpan comedy is already a challenge to get right and this movie seems to think that inserting low-brow vulgarity into white collar crime is a multi-million dollar opportunity.

If you would pardon me to stoop to it's level, this AIDs-riddled whore of a movie blows it's load in the first few minutes by introducing us to Leonardo DiCaprio's first job and the stockbrokers he meets are swearing up and down more than I do (which is somewhat impressive). Suddenly he's sitting down to a very public lunch setting surrounded by people at other tables in suits and Stockbroker McConaughey is very visible just snorting cocaine.

And talking about snorting cocaine.

And recommending Leonardo DiCaprio snort cocaine.

And then he starts beating his chest like a gorilla and grumbling like he's trying to summon rain.

And nobody reacts.

And Leo's just like, "I see that I've joined the right company". And boom, just like that, we've entirely nuked a potential character arc.

Already we've established that Leo's character is a twisted ******* and we've pushed the envelope of absurdity so far that the later scenes of midgets, orgies, and rampant drug abuse just aren't surprising. In fact the movie spoils all of this right away with Leo winking and nodding to the camera.

At this point I look at the progress bar and I'm like ****, there are 3 hours of this??


It really doesn't improve past that, it's just scene after scene of swearing, taking drugs, having sex, and the whole time it struggles to seem in any way believable. This movie is about a stock fraudster getting caught and ratting on his associates, but that's just the packaging for a degenerate ****show. I would LIKE to have seen more about how close he came to getting caught, or what all the things he did that tipped authorities off, but all of that is glossed over and multiple times throughout the movie Leo is monologuing to the audience about what exactly he's doing to scam people...

...but then he cuts himself off and goes all "NAH, you're too stupid to understand all that stock mumbo jumbo. Point is I'm filthy rich."

Why would you do that? I wanted to know this stuff, I wanted this world to be grounded in reality a little bit, but no, the audience just wants to see more ****.

The entire experience was just these people ****ing around and acting like psychos until the anticlimactic ending where the morally bankrupt main character goes back to the hustle. This movie is basically Lord of War... but worse. A Leonardo DiCaprio movie did a Nicolas Cage movie worse.

I can't help but think back to Catch Me If You Can, which was another movie in which Leonardo DiCaprio plays a conman, and that movie was so much more enjoyable.

Another thing that bothered me was the music choices, so often they seemed totally inappropriate for the scene. Sure, Everlong by Foo Fighters was released around the same time as when these events took place, but are you trying to evoke the 90s rock scene with Leonardo DiCaprio on a ****ing yacht?

At least Sir Mixalot's Baby Got Back was more appropriate, but that should really tell you how seriously this movie takes itself.

I got one or two amused grunts out of this. Leo's done much better elsewhere.