The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

The Wolf of Wall Street (R) - Review

"Through the Eye of the Needle"

The Wolf is the life and times of stock maven Jordan Belfort, a tale of capricious sex, scandalous excess, and constant drug abuse.  Belfort reigned during the Wall Street years of the early 90s, forming a cadre of loyal sales men and nere'do'wells willing to screw anything to make a dollar, all they need is a pennicillin shot every couple of weeks to keep them going.  WOWS is another collaboration between Leonardo DiCaprio as Jordan and helmed by the cinematic genius of the one and only Martin Scorsese.

The raging parties in WOWS would make Caligula blush, and the coke-fueled pace runs full tilt for most of its 3 hour run time.  Leo's Jordan is much more believable than his Gatsby, he uses his money to buy power, friends and women with a kind of fun-loving innocence that is hard to fault.  This is the frenetic fun last third of Goodfellas played out over hour upon hour, never letting up and never showing a wink to the audience.  This is where Wolf may confuse some audiences yet is simply brilliant, for it never need apologize, money is its own excuse.  Jordan NEVER believes he has done anything wrong, never buys into the system of right and wrong on the stock market.  He is surrounded by laughing frat boys of his own employ, most conspicuous of the lot is Jonah Hill's grinning Donny, a best friend with a penchant for trouble making and pill popping.  The movie also never fully delves into the scams and legality of his firm, Jordan assures us into the camera that this is all boring chit chat better left unsaid, he'd rather concentrate on the amounts of money he is making because of it.  Hooked on 'ludes and cocaine, on the rush of the selling floor and the weekly morale parties he lavishly throws, once Jordan hears he is being investigated by the FBI he can't help but foolishly stick his powdered nose right in, leading to an eventual downfall that plays our more like the last angriest hours of a farewell party, the wildest and most dangerous ones.

Don't think Leo and Jonah do it alone, this is an amazingly talented ensemble cast too long to list but each one contributing some essential joke or sentiment that is a construction of huge structurally cinematic magnificence that will be longtime editor Thelma Schoolmaker's masterpiece.  There is no flotsam or unneeded exposition, it's lengthy runtime is somehow needed and exactly scalped.  Scene after scene of beauty/power/emotion zip by at a roaring Lamborghini's pace, so much so that it's easy to overlook the scope and skill of the camera work and editing, but do not blink or you'll miss more than just enough skin to make Hugh Hefner blanch.  The lack of downtime is astonishing, the amount of planning and energy to pull it off astounding, all accomplished by our elder film masters makes it simply incredible. The hilarious frathouse humor is onpar with the best modern comedies and needs to be since it constitutes the majority of the dialogue.  Once things get hairy and wives get as pissed as the Fed, only then does some self control become needed but cannot be attained.  Living in a world of money begging to be taken and coke holidays in Venice, how can one down shift back to NA Beer and vacations to Disney World?  Jordan and his crew cannot back down, they are as hooked on the cash as they are the pills and hookers.  Unfortunately for us Americans, unlike the world of mafia and blue collar crime that Marty usually inhabits, this world of white collar crime certainly does pay and in spades without all the ice picks and hallow points and lengthy jail sentences.

The true genius of Scorsese and Co.'s Wolf of Wall Street is that the criminality of it all is only a few shades from grey.  This is an indictment, pure and simple, of a financial system that allows 90% of what is occurring as legal, of money conjured from nowhere in IPOs and stacks of pennies that fall between the cracks in huge multinational transactions.  It hints the bubbles that burst, the banks that fail, the men that get rich and the families ruined, it shows it all without actually showing it, focusing instead on those grinning bastards that are on the other side of the phone sell sell selling, all through the energetic rose colored lens and unyeilding optimism of one of  the market's greatest champions, Jordan Belfort DWI extraordinaire.  The final shot holds that coke flaked mirror up to us, the audience, a multi-ethnic majority watching from our conference room chairs... observing and accepting the way things are instead of asking why it has to be this way, wishing instead on the magic numbers and looking for our own slice of the pie.

9 Leo's Backside Candles out of 10 (OUTSTANDING)