WOLF OF WALL STREET

There are unlikable protagonists in movies - and then there’s Jordan Belfort (Leonardo Dicaprio), a man who makes Gordon Gekko look like Mother Teresa. What we see over the course of the film is Belfort’s “true story” of his rise in Wall Street and his fiery crash. The first thing to get out of the way is that at three hours the film is too long, there isn’t even that much story to stretch out over the running time. Instead we get eight hundred different ways to snort cocaine (plus other assorted drugs) and the full range of Dicaprio’s arsenal of weird and funny facial expressions. It’s not like any of these scenes are terrible, there are just too many of them and thus they bloat the running time needlessly. As it gets towards the final reel things begin to come apart somewhat, the film actually ends twenty minutes before it stops running - unfortunately no one seems to have told Scorsese. All of this is a shame because there is actually a lot to enjoy in Wolf of Wall Street, Dicaprio’s turn as the unbalanced Belfort is very comically enjoyable and is the highlight of the film. There are also several very well directed, very funny, set pieces that are really entertaining, the best one involving an unusual car journey is downright hysterical. I think the main problem with Wolf is that it doesn’t really say anything; Belfort’s actions are neither condoned nor condemned. Rather than making the film impartial this really stops it being anything more meaningful than your average excess comedy, not that there is anything necessarily wrong with that, but given the subject matter it could have been much more. FINAL VERDICT 6/10 well directed and enjoyable but not Scorsese at his best.