There’s perverse joy in watching a remorselessly greedy man destroy himself with degenerate revelry. In “The Wolf of Wall Street,”[1] Leonardo DiCaprio plays Jordan Belfort, a stockbroker with bottomless appetites for women, pills and that great green paper. In showcasing his exploits, the movie is dangerously close to being three hours of nothing but irreverent indulgence: drinking, drugging, screwing, yelling, cussing, laughing, crying, buying, selling and spending, spending, spending.
It makes sense that a movie about excess is itself excessive. Director Martin Scorsese, it seems, barely has control of this story. At three hours, it can be drawn-out and repetitive. But he is too much a master of the form not to have a method to his madness. Scorsese elongates the Bacchanalia so it stretches past comedy, to shock, to disbelief, to sadness. Greed is not good. It destroys things – property, other people, the perpetrator’s own mind.
This is not to say “Wolf of Wall Street” is some kind of sobering morality play. It is easily the funniest picture Scorsese ever has made. It’s also remarkably crude in its comedy. It opens with scenes of Belfort tossing little people at an office party, and snorting cocaine off a prostitute’s nether regions. In voiceover, he brags about his Ferrari, which is just like the one on “Miami Vice,” and how he’s married to a former Miller Lite girl (Margo Robbie). We see her sprawled naked on a bed. He made $49 million by age 26. Drunk and/or high, he crashes his helicopter into the backyard of his obscene upstate villa, which angers his wife. The landscaping is ruined.
Belfort stares directly into the camera and says he takes 10 to 15 Quaaludes a day, among a smattering of other depressants and stimulants, various and sundry. The narrative then flashes back a few years, when he was a wide-eyed pup with his first Wall Street gig. His boss is Mark Hanna, played by Matthew McConaughey, who owns the screen in his brief scenes. Hanna inspires Belfort to be a swindler. To manipulate the system for his gain. To masturbate more. “Tootski?” Hanna asks, pulling out a vial of cocaine.
But the Black Monday crash of 1987 happens, leaving Belfort unemployed and yearning for material wealth. He brings his hardball Wall Street training to penny-stock sales, and starts cleaning up in commissions. He parks his Jag at a diner for lunch. Donnie Azoff (Jonah Hill), a goofball with big, gleaming white teeth and a sweater tied over his shoulders, approaches his table, asks about his success, agrees to work for him. They end up smoking crack out back by the dumpster. They are destined to be best friends.
I do not spoil by revealing such things. Promise. The movie goes much further than this, into uproarious moments of great hyperbolic perversity. An extended sequence in which Belfort and Azoff reach the illogical end of their Quaalude addiction is a jaw-dropper in the sense that laughter will escape from your body like a jailbreak.
Belfort feels untouchable, surrounded by a vast cushion of millions. But he’s also paranoid. Maybe it’s the drugs. Maybe it’s the fact that what he’s doing is illegal. There’s a terrific scene in which Belfort invites an FBI agent (Kyle Chandler) on his yacht - “fit for a Bond villain,” Belfort says – and plays cat-and-mouse with him. Then, he retreats into his fortress of denial, built out of sketchy Swiss bank account, his grossly overinflated sense of privilege and the great confidence he has in his own slimy weaseldom. This is America. He worked hard, and deserves what he has. Right?
Again, I do not spoil: Belfort is a real man, and “The Wolf of Wall Street” is his real story. He talks about it on the lecture circuit, now that he’s out of prison. His autobiography forms the basis of Terence Winter’s caustically funny screenplay. One hopes the film amplifies the facts, because that’s how it feels – big, colorful, impossibly vibrant. In interviews, DiCaprio calls it a modern-day “Caligula,” and he’s not really exaggerating. Scorsese directs with propulsive purpose, feeding off DiCaprio’s manic energy. It’s an amazing performance for both men. They maintain this pace remarkably well, a fever pitch mirroring the frenzied chaos of the trading floor. Their work fierce and unforgettable.
John Serba is film critic and entertainment reporter for MLive and The Grand Rapids Press. Email him at jserba@mlive.com[2] or follow him on Twitter[3] or Facebook[4] .
References
- ^ “The Wolf of Wall Street,” (www.imdb.com)
- ^ jserba@mlive.com (www.mlive.com)
- ^ Twitter (twitter.com)
- ^ Facebook (www.facebook.com)
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