THE WOLF OF WALL STREET. (2013) DIRECTED BY MARTIN SCORSESE.
BASED ON THE BOOK OF THE SAME NAME BY JORDAN BELFORT.
STARRING LEONARDO DICAPRIO, JONAH HILL, MARGOT ROBBIE, JOANNA LUMLEY AND MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY.
REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
‘Sell me this pen…’
‘I’m not fuckin’ leaving!’
Anyone who thought Martin Scorsese was all washed up as a director by 2013 was WRONG. Wrong, wrong, wrong. The director of such fantastic and iconic films as MEAN STREETS, TAXI DRIVER, RAGING BULL, GOODFELLAS, CAPE FEAR, CASINO, GANGS OF NEW YORK and THE DEPARTED pulled it out of the bag yet again with THE WOLF OF WALL STREET, a phenomenal movie featuring a career-best performance from lil’ ol’ Jack Dawson from TITANIC, aka Leonardo DiCaprio.
And, no, he didn’t win the Oscar for it but he bloody well should have. He was MAGNIFICENT as Jordan Belfort, the man once nicknamed ‘the Wolf of Wall Street’ who wrote the memoir on which the film is based. He was a stockbroker who made it rich by running something called a ‘boiler room’ in conjunction with something else called a ‘penny-stock scam.’
I know nothing about stocks and shares except for what I picked up from the original WALL STREET movie featuring Michael Douglas as Gordon the Gekko- sorry, no, just Gordon Gekko- and even then, all I really learned from that film is that greed is somehow good, so don’t y’all be asking me to explain fiddly financial things in detail to all y’all. It’s outside my remit, lol.
The movie shows Leo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill, as buddies and business partners Jordan Belfort and Donnie Azoff respectively, making millions (mostly illegally) from their stock-broking company, Stratton Oakmont, and living the kind of lifestyle they had only ever dreamed of previously. (‘Is any of this legal? Is it fuck…?!’)
Cars, beautiful women, or pussy (not my word!), mansions, yachts, holidays abroad, designer suits and drugs, oh, so very many drugs. So many drugs that a normal person would barely be able to comprehend why they were frying their remaining brain cells in such a couldn’t-care-less fashion.
Doing cocaine off a hooker’s ass when you’re married to Margot Robbie’s stunning lingerie designer Naomi (this is Belfort we’re talking about here) and not really caring who knows it are the actions of a man who has too much of everything…
He has the kind of wife most men can only fantasise about possessing, but he treats his marriage as casually and carelessly as he would treat his three-thousand-dollar suits, so he shouldn’t really be surprised when it looks like he’s going to lose it…
The Feds are after him too, of course, because of his illegal dealings, that is to say, most of his dealings. Jordan manages to keep one step ahead of them for a while, although God knows how, given how coked-up he is most of the time, but a day of reckoning is coming and it won’t be pretty…
Matthew McConaughey, an actor I never liked or rated until I saw him in THE DALLAS BUYERS’ CLUB, is electrifying as Mark Hanna, a degenerate stockbroker working for investment banking firm L.F. Rothschild, which collapsed during the 1987 stock market crash.
Hanna is everything Jordan Belfort aspires to be, and he quickly assimilates the lessons the older man gives him during one fateful lunch, particularly the ones about boozing it up and taking as much cocaine as your nose will hold, but also about one’s first loyalty being always to oneself. Make as much money for yourself as you can and to hell with everyone else, advises Hanna, while an enchanted Belfort laps it up.
Jonah Hill, an actor I thought was just a lightweight participant in stupid rude buddy comedies (I really must stop judging people till I know a little about them, lol), is fantastic as former children’s furniture salesman, Donnie Azoff. As Donnie, he really enters into this winners’ lifestyle with great gusto, and DiCaprio and Hill work really well together.
Posh English actress, Joanna Lumley of ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS fame, has a small role as Jordan’s second wife Naomi’s Aunt Emma, who’s involved with Belfort in a big money scam involving Swiss Banks. As Donnie says to the hooker-type who’s going to smuggle money into Europe for them;
‘You’ve got my money taped to your tits. So I should think you work for me now.’
The film definitely puts across the message that not only is greed good, but it’s the be-all and end-all. A huge emphasis is placed on material goods, particularly by Jordan Belfort, who is obsessed with expensive possessions and all the outer trappings of immense wealth; cars, houses, boats with helicopters on top of them, and designer togs. He knows the price of everything, but, seemingly, the value of nothing.
He has his health- well, initially, anyways, until his depraved lifestyle catches up with him- and a beautiful wife and two little daughters. That should be enough for him. But he doesn’t seem to rate these things the way he does a three-thousand-dollar suit, so he doesn’t value them the way he should.
Jordan Belfort is an incredible salesman, so his motivational speaking career should be enough to keep him going when everything goes tits-up with the Feds, and brothers in crime have little choice but to shop each other in exchange for less time in the can. Yes, thank you, I DO speak fluent Sopranos, actually, thank you for noticing. I learned it in the School of F*ck Your Mother…
THE WOLF OF WALL STREET is three hours long, super-sexy and exciting, a real rollercoaster ride for the feels. Leo should most definitely have gotten the Best Actor Oscar for this, and Jonah Hill for Best Supporting Actor, but no. Grrr. It wasn’t to be. The film does, however, hold a Guinness Book of Records record for the most swearing ever seen in a film. Fuck, not really? What, seriously? Fuckity fuck fuck fuck. That’s fucking fucked, man…
sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris 