Leonardo DiCaprio gives everything he has, but Martin Scorsese’s Wall Street epic feels less like a revelation than a familiar gangster movie wearing expensive loafers.
Let me begin with what may sound like a contradiction: The Wolf of Wall Street is a great movie—and it is still highly overrated.
Martin Scorsese’s three-hour carnival of greed, drugs, sex, and financial crime is energetic, funny, outrageous, and anchored by a fearless performance from Leonardo DiCaprio. Yet beneath all that cocaine-dusted spectacle, I could never escape the feeling that I was watching Goodfellas repainted as a Wall Street movie.
DiCaprio’s Jordan Belfort is essentially Ray Liotta’s Henry Hill in a tailored suit. He narrates his own rise, welcomes us into a seductive criminal subculture, becomes intoxicated by its excesses, and eventually watches the entire operation collapse around him. The setting has changed from mob-controlled Brooklyn to brokerage firms and Long Island mansions, but the machinery is remarkably familiar.
That does not mean DiCaprio is bad. I love DiCaprio, and he attacks this role with astonishing commitment. His physical comedy during the Quaalude sequence is legendary for a reason. But Jordan Belfort never felt like much more than a Wall Street variation on the classic Scorsese gangster protagonist. DiCaprio performs the character brilliantly; I just do not find the character especially deep or believable.
Oliver Stone’s Wall Street remains the superior film because its seduction unfolds gradually. Charlie Sheen’s Bud Fox does not begin the movie as a depraved lunatic surrounded by cheering degenerates. We watch Gordon Gekko draw him into a world of wealth, access, and moral compromise one decision at a time. Michael Douglas makes greed appear intelligent, sophisticated, and—most importantly—tempting.
That slow corruption gives Wall Street credibility. You understand how an ambitious young person could cross the first line, rationalize the second, and eventually discover that he has wandered far from the person he once believed himself to be.
The Wolf of Wall Street operates at full volume almost immediately. Everyone is already screaming. Everyone is already taking drugs. Everyone is apparently ready to participate in a massive office-wide orgy at a moment’s notice. The grotesque culture is established so quickly and so thoroughly that later attempts to escalate it become exhausting rather than revealing.
The scene involving Jordan’s father, played by Rob Reiner, furiously questioning the company’s enormous bill for restaurant “sides” is a good example. By that point, we have already seen enough financial, sexual, and chemical excess to understand that Stratton Oakmont has no adult supervision. The scene keeps hammering home a point the movie established long ago.
Yes, these people are reckless.
Yes, they are vulgar.
Yes, they waste absurd amounts of money.
We get it.
The characters also feel less like recognizable human beings than transplanted Goodfellas archetypes. Jonah Hill’s Donnie Azoff is entertaining, but he often comes across as another variation on the unstable, unpredictable gangster sidekick. The brokerage floor resembles a mob social club with telephones. Even the FBI investigation occupies the familiar Scorsese territory of criminals becoming so arrogant that they can no longer imagine consequences applying to them.
Perhaps that is intentional. Perhaps Scorsese is arguing that organized financial crime is simply organized crime with better tailoring and greater social acceptance. That is a worthwhile point, but the film’s relentless farce sometimes works against it. I found Henry Hill’s journey into organized crime more believable than Jordan Belfort’s reign over an office where seemingly every employee is delighted to join one enormous, never-ending party.
There is still plenty to admire. The filmmaking is audacious. The editing rarely allows the enormous runtime to become boring. DiCaprio is magnetic, Hill is fearless, and Margot Robbie immediately establishes herself as far more than another decoration in Jordan’s world. At its best, the movie captures the obscene confidence of men who believe money has liberated them from morality.
But for Scorsese, the bar is higher.
This is the director of Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, and The Departed. Merely producing an entertaining, technically dazzling spectacle is not enough to make The Wolf of Wall Street one of his greatest achievements. Too much of it feels recycled, exaggerated, and stretched beyond the point where its excess still has something new to say.
I liked this movie better when Oliver Stone made Wall Street—and when Scorsese made Goodfellas.
Cool Filmz Rating: Queen
A Queen is still a strong hand. The Wolf of Wall Street is bold, hilarious, exceptionally performed, and undeniably entertaining. It is also repetitive, farcical, and far less profound than its reputation suggests.
Great movie.
Overrated Scorsese.
