The Wolf of Wall Street (movie)
Now this is a different story… I’m guessing you remember my review of the book The Wolf of Wall Street. A perfectly solid book, quite educational in many ways.
Now the question is: can the film be better than the book?
My answer is — yes. In this case, the film surpassed the book.
Especially if you decide not to take the film seriously at all.
Since I already went into great detail about the plot in the book review (you can find it here), now you get a shortened version. Jordan Belfort → manipulation of worthless stocks on the stock market with his young Stratton recruits → junkie friends who are just as bad as he is → tens of millions of dollars made → a rollercoaster of drug, alcohol, and prostitute orgies (most often all at once, and never just one prostitute in the scenario) → outsmarting the FBI → downfall.
And that’s enough. 🙂
Anyway, the movie is incredibly entertaining and funny. To be honest, I watched it more as a parody of the book than as a film adaptation of it. I imagined a scene where Scorsese and DiCaprio go to Jordan Belfort and tell him: “Listen, we think your book is great, maybe a bit too dry, but it has potential. We’ve decided to adapt it into a film, we’ll take the most absurd scenes from the book, rearrange them a bit, and then make them even more ridiculous and twisted. No, Jordan, we’re not paying you in Quaaludes and cocaine, you’ll get money like normal people do. Jordan, put those Orbit mints down, we’ve told you seven times — they’re not Quaaludes.”
And then you get scenes like this one, and you choke from laughter. 😀
Or brilliant scenes like this.
However, the fact that it’s wrapped in the icing of comedy does not mean that The Wolf of Wall Street doesn’t carry a serious message. There are people who will try to scam you at every step. People who will try to “sell” you a story so quickly and bombard you with so much information that you don’t have time to properly switch on your brain and think it through, and in the panic of not wanting to miss the “ideal” opportunity, you end up diving into who knows what — and losing your money.
The film is excellently composed from both a visual and musical standpoint.
The cast did an amazing job. Leonardo DiCaprio is genuinely aging like fine wine when it comes to acting. He has stacked up such strong performances that I think fewer and fewer people remember that annoying kid from Titanic who many predicted would never achieve anything in the film world and would never grow into a real actor. What’s especially interesting about the kid from (Titanic’s) deck is that he also showed he has a knack for comedy — even straight-up slapstick (check the first link if you skipped it). He should definitely try more of that. A well-deserved Oscar nomination for this role. Jonah Hill pairs with him perfectly; the man knows comedy. Also a well-deserved nomination. The beautiful Margot Robbie is great as the Wolf’s wife, and it’s a big shame she didn’t get more room to show her talent (considering that Nadine gets plenty of space in the book). And the rest of the cast fits everything nicely. Matthew McConaughey is as crazy as he is brilliant — he sometimes needs only ten minutes on screen to shine in his weirdness.
All in all, The Wolf of Wall Street is truly a super fun movie and you’ll have a great time with it. But it’s definitely not the best work from Scorsese (nor from DiCaprio). It deserves the high ratings and praise, though in my opinion they’re maybe slightly too high. For me, no matter how good and fun it is, it won’t be one of my classics. And I think it will fade from people’s memory pretty quickly.
Which is all the more reason not to skip it — it would be a shame. 😀
The irony is that the movie really did turn out better than the book. Jordan Belfort is, after all, not much of a writer. 😀
And you, dear reader — do you vote for the movie or the book? 🙂
Trailer
Imdb | Rotten Tomatoes | Metacritic
Format: Film
Runtime: 180 minutes
