The Wolf of Wall Street

The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

77% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 147 reviews)

Runtime: 180 minutes (no, I did not mistype that)

Directed by: Martin Scorsese

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie, Kyle Chandler, Rob Reiner

From: Paramount/Red Granite Pictures

Here's a movie that I saw last night and I finally have a quality candidate for my Top 10 of the year list. Not to spoil it but it'll be in the top 3 at worst, it's looking like. I saw it with a bigger crowd than I expected and thankfully I had little problems with them. They laughed at the right times and they gasped at the most shocking moments. I'll note that I know little about the true life story this was based upon and I haven't read the book that the protagonist wrote about his life story and how he did all these crazy things.

To steal the plot from the IMDb: “Based on the true story of Jordan Belfort, from his rise to a wealthy stockbroker living the high life to his fall involving crime, corruption and the federal government.” I know, not really a sentence. You start off with Belfort starting off his career in Wall Street. He's young and innocent but he quickly gets told by Matthew McConaughey how it really is and you have to get a drug-using madman to succeed as a stockbroker. He gets laid off after Black Monday happens in late 1987. He has to work in a penny stock operation and it's a low-quality operation, to say the least. However, with his charisma and powerful persuasion, he makes the outfit a success and he starts up his own company, Stratton Oakmont. It's a wild out of control horny crazy company that at best was incredibly shady. He and his employees make an incredible amount of money. Belfort becomes crazy due to abusing an incredible amount of drugs; so does his right hand man Donnie (Hill; for some reason, most of the real-life names were changed for the movie), which leads to some amazing adventures with the two. Jordan dumps his cute brunette wife for a hot blonde (Robbie; yeah, she is hot) and eventually things turn real bad.

Not to spoil things, but Belfort did end up serving jail time in Nevada and Tommy Chong (yes, THAT Tommy Chong) convinced him to write a book about his story, which became this movie. What a loud and profane movie it is.

I know film fans will HATE this but I think this is the perfect double bill with Pain & Gain. I say that as both are loud bombastic over the top tales of excesses and bizarre things that happen which are purported to be true. Of course I've only seen the two movies one time each and if you actually try it, it may be a crap idea. But it's just a thought. Of course, this movie should be watched second as needless to say, even when it comes to wild out of control stories, Scorsese can do it better than Michael F'ing Bay. Pain & Gain can be like a warmup to the main event.

I understand why some would be turned off by such a profane film where the F bomb is dropped over 500 times, you have copious amounts of garishness, drug use and full frontal nudity... and oh yeah the movie is a few seconds short of 3 full hours. Yet with me, I dug it all and I was fascinated by the crazy story and all the odd things that happened.

With the director everything is top notch, from how it's filmed to the pacing, the performances (Leo was awesome; so was Jonah Hill and the several incredible things his character did) and there's several classic soliloquies. There's also some things that only Scorsese could pull off, from fourth wall breaking to internal monologues and it all works. The soundtrack is also cool. There's no Rolling Stones songs (believe it or not) and there's everything from blues to jazz to odd poppy songs to the Plastic Bertrand song you heard in National Lampoon's European Vacation.

It may not be for all tastes but if you enjoyed something ostentatious like Pain & Gain then you should see this too. I am glad I saw it on the big screen. I am sure that people will idolize Belfort and the awful things he did which ruined people's lives, just because he lived to excess. However, you should more note his downfall and how bad his life turned out. Right now I understand he's doing alright out of jail but it was still a downfall.

I'll be back Monday night.