After going unexpectedly family-friendly with 2011’s Hugo,
Martin Scorsese pulls a dramatic 180 with The
Wolf of Wall Street, a nonstop barrage of drug-fueled decadence adapted by Terence Winter from
real-life
stockbroking swindler Jordan
Belfort’s memoir. The book is a distant relative of the truth,
it’s been said, and the film is a distant relative of the book. A big, unruly
bacchanal with a sizeable, sinister smile on its lips, the movie is a bit of a
contradiction, both abashed and
unashamed, spectacle and cautionary
tale, ode to and indictment of
dollars, depravity, and conspicuous consumption.
Disturbing and exciting, exhilarating and exhausting, the endlessly
entertaining film holds together by sheer virtue of its exuberant, furious
filmmaking energy. Scorsese might be the best cinematic connoisseur of
charismatic sociopaths, and Henry
Hill or Nicky Santoro
ain’t got nothing on Belfort. The Wolf of
Wall Street’s brokers are avatars of an age of heedless self-indulgence and
greed, gangsters with fountain pens instead of guns, slicing and dicing your
bank account and putting your savings in a vise rather than your head. And,
just like in the much less cynical and coked-up American
Hustle, you’ll cheer the con artists on and thank them for swindling
you when they’re done.
