The Wolf Of Wall Street
Jordan Belfort was a bit of an asshole. That is the truth that the Wolf of Wall Street never just flat out tells you but hints at throughout. He wasn’t always that way. He started off an idealistic young potential stock broker who got seduced by money. It seems like a simplistic way to look at the world. The Wolf of Wall Street (based on the novel by the real Jordan Belfort) is the tale of Jordan’s rise from wide eyed Leonard DiCaprio to drug addled Leonardo DiCaprio, a man so far gone by his desire to make money that he couldn’t leave well enough alone and facing 20 years in prison.
The film begins at the end of the 80‘s when a young Jordan Belfort finds his calling as a stockbroker. He passes his series 7 exam and becomes a stock broker ready to make the real money. That day happens to be what the wall street people call “black Monday” and Jordan ends up unemployed in an economy which does not support stock brokers. People are wary of investing and as a result no one wants is hiring. He considers going to work in retail until his first wife (played by How I Met Your Mother’s Mother Cristin Milioti) finds an ad in the paper looking for stock brokers to sell penny stocks. Jordan is a hell of a salesman and elevates the small time scam to a big time business. When he meets his partner in crime, Donnie Azoff (Jonah Hill), they decide to go into business for themselves and create Stratton Oakmont so he can sell the worthless penny stocks to the 1 per-centers. So are they criminals? Not really other than the pounds of drugs, hundreds of hookers, and insider trading. I know I wanted to root for Jordan to get his act together. He just didn’t. As the movie goes on there are very funny moments, the parts are all well acted (just wait until you see the Quaaludes scene) but I just didn’t want to root for these people. They are equally depraved, sad, pathetic human beings who love being rich. In a world of economic inequality this movie just reinforces that the rich get away with whatever they want.
Put in the hands of Martin Scorsese, you know The Wolf of Wall Street is going to be a good movie and it is. I liked Martin Scorsese. Goodfellas is a top 10 movie in my personal Hall of Fame. I even loved the more recent Shutter Island...brilliant movie. I just don't get The Wolf Of Wall Street. The acting is top notch and the story could have been intriguing enough to carry the bloated 3 hour runtime if there was a point to it. I just never cared about one person in this movie except Jordan's Dad Max (Rob Reiner). But Jordan Belfort is not someone worth rooting for. Donnie Azoff is a horrible human being who may or may not be married to his cousin but he loves to get fucked up. Isn't that awesome? Naomi Belfort is a horrible person who ruins Jordan’s marriage to his first wife and stays with him solely because she enjoys the lifestyle he provides. FBI Agent Patrick Denham (Kyle Chandler) and Teresa Belfort (Cristin Milioti) are people worth rooting for but the movie uses them as plot devices to show how clever Belfort is. Belfort is just a criminal who while charming, good looking, rich and getting away with everything he does is a joyless man. He cheats people out of their hard earned money and spends the money buying things and drugs for himself. His life is mostly joyless and he spends the majority of the movie drunk, stoned or both. It is a joyless movie. Even the copious amounts of sex. It seems thrown in as though it shows that all of the horrible things Jordan does are all worth it. There is dark humor and some genuinely funny moments but they are not always funny when you look back on them.
This is not the first movie based on Stratton Oakmont and Jordan Belfort. The movie “Boiler Room” is based on the events in this movie. The only difference is that in Boiler Room, there is a moral to the story. Punishment is meted out for the crimes they commit. I enjoyed The Wolf of Wall Street, I really just felt it was a well acted/directed movie about a group of people I didn’t want to hang out with. It is O.K., they probably wouldn’t want to hang out with me either. This movie is like seeing the cool kids in high school get a movie praising all the bullying and excluding everyone out of their coolness bracket. I get it. You did all the drugs you could want. You flew helicopters and had a big yacht. You ditched your pretty "normal" wife for the upgraded blond with legs for miles. You played with others people money, lost a lot of it, stole some of it and made yourself sickeningly rich. You got a lot hookers, tossed little people at dart boards and created a multi million dollar company all built on lies and salesmanship. If the movie set out to tell the story of a morally ambiguous person who learns in the end that what he did was wrong, it failed. If it decided to tell the tale of a man who is a monster to his wives, kids, friends and colleagues, it succeeded. I just don't see why we needed to see it. Even a private plane crashing and killing 3 people is treated as an aside and not really important.
I guess it was not a movie for me. Do I think it is a bad movie? Not by any means. I liked the movie... it was good. I'll keep telling myself that over and over again. Maybe some day I’ll actually believe it. Not today though.
Mr. Unhappy sez: A well crafted tale of moral ambiguity but Best Picture? Not even close.
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