The Wolf of Wall Street

Martin Scorsese’s new film opens with a scene in which protagonist/fraudster Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) is inserting cocaine into the—well, let’s just say, employing an alternative though efficient method of introducing drugs to the blood stream—of a hooker. It’s a crude visual that even the sleek voiceover narrative can’t quite erase. Given the two hours and fifty-nine minutes that follow, perhaps that’s the point.

Titled after the first of two autobiographies, The Wolf of Wall Street presents Belfort’s account of his own rise and fall(-ish). It’s an account unencumbered by the more traditional balancing elements found in tales of hubris and addiction. There are legal consequences, but the morality behind them is muted. There are a few instances of relationship fallout, but nothing the viewer doesn’t see coming or that Belfort doesn’t move on from. And the countless victims of Belfort’s schemes? Suckers who had it coming. As a result, Belfort comes across as that old college buddy you run into at a bar whose wild stories of success and debauchery are pretty entertaining as long as you can ignore the obvious omissions and suppress your empathy for others.

Throughout the film, it’s hard to shake the feeling that too much of this particular tale is rigged. (Perhaps that’s the point?) Granted, the film is autobiography—con-men and addicts can spin the most charming and convincing of tales, and Belfort is both. To hear him tell it (and to watch DiCaprio act it), Belfort was an initially naïve stockbroker who had an eye-opening, if somewhat weird, lunch with an older broker (Matthew McConaughey). From there, he quickly evolved from working harder to working smarter, in turn transforming a band of regular Joes into millionaires. Even his drug use is something he mostly controls—only the failures of some of those less intelligent people he allowed on his coattails bring him down. Scorsese seems intent on abetting Belfort’s attempt to spread the self-love and self-delusion, focusing on the sex, drugs and spectacle ad nauseam, and relying on those cheap shots of cinematic narrative—montage and voiceover—whenever the action slows. In doing so, Scorsese may indeed want the reader to eventually be sickened by the unrelenting excess of it all. (Though it’s hard to tell if that’s the point.)