The Wolf of Wall Street

Martin Scorsese makes films in the space where men are enamoured with the lure of something more, but conflicted, challenged and corrupted by the chase. Scorsese’s protagonists commonly want, hope for, and dream of greater things, irrespective of the cost. His anti-heroes scheme and swindle as they strive to attain their desires by any means. With twenty-three features over a decorated forty-seven-year career, Scorsese’s films are primarily populated with those in pursuit – not just of a better life – but of easy-living.

Scorsese’s tools of acerbic narration often include addressing the camera and staring down the centre of the frame. Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio, The Great Gatsby) slides from the same mould, but is far from a clone of the director’s other complex lead characters. In the filmmaker’s fifth effort steered by his regular star, the raucous, reckless trader becomes the apex of aspiration and entitlement, succeeding through expert salesmanship, abundant overconfidence and ample shady dealings. Belfort’s achievements – money, property, infamy – are many. His vices – drugs, women, greed – are similarly extensive. Transforming from a bright-eyed broker cold-calling contacts and eschewing substances to the quaalude-addled kingpin of a murky moneymaking empire, he inspired admiration and abhorrence to earn his carnivorous nickname.

With swagger and swearing, the man known as ‘the wolf of Wall Street’ cares little for decorum or decency as he guides his gang of offsiders towards extravagance and excess; sprawling and surging, The Wolf of Wall Street (the film), thrusts the mania and mayhem of an almost-immoral fixation with all things bigger and better into the pole position. Initiated into the realities of the stock trade by a chest-beating mentor he swiftly emulates (Matthew McConaughey, Mud), Belfort draws others into his web of superficial glitz and stolen glamour – including his right-hand man, Donnie (Jonah Hill, This is the End), wife, Naomi (Margot Robbie, About Time), Swiss banker (Jean Dujardin, The Artist), and the FBI agent (Kyle Chandler, The Spectacular Now) determined to uncover his misconduct. Of course, the glow of lavishness procured rather earned, can only be short-lived.

Comedy and cynicism rages through the pointed repetition of partying hordes – slipping into the stillness and sobriety of conversation and contemplation as well-timed punctuation – as Scorsese’s film stays fast, funny, farcical, flexible and feverish, ably aping the slick surfeit over which the titular, real-life figure obsesses. This is not Scorsese at his most subtle or concise. Nor does he refrain from imitating his own efforts in framework, motivations, aesthetics, acoustics, pace and pitch from his famed 1990s crime opuses. All the trademarks are evident, almost reassuringly so: the camera, wielded by cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto (Argo), careens in and around the heady world and hedonistic protagonist; the cutting, spliced by the director’s regular editor Thelma Schoonmaker (Hugo), works to contrast the extremities of luxury; the musical cues, incorporating Cypress Hill, Billy Joel and The Lemonheads, add more than just an audio rhythm.

And yet, as the filmmaker paints a brazen plane of existence with the pithiest and most precise of brushes, The Wolf of Wall Street plays its true hand through performances, with DiCaprio the intoxicating main attraction and the feature’s enlivened spirit animal. Like Robert De Niro before him, he continues to evolve in the helmer’s gaze – and, whether dancing, fighting, fornicating or participating in other devious or deviant behaviour, to shift and surprise, as well. Witness his impassioned speeches to see the sheen, and glimpse his confident banter to see the patter, but revel in his displays of drug-taking to see the extent of his contorting commitment and awe-inspiring embodiment of character. His supports are all uniformly excellent: Hill, Robbie, the cursing Rob Reiner (Alex & Emma) and sophisticated Joanna Lumley (Late Bloomers) among them, but DiCaprio’s tragic titan of wealth is never anything but the centre of the viewer’s attention.

With Gangs of New York and The Departed, The Wolf of Wall Street fits into a thematic trilogy borne of their common director and actor, one pondering the plight to transcend societal confines and inherited status through duplicity and duality, and poking for commentary but never overtly condoning or condemning. Again, men and their means for advancement monopolise the story, this time taken by Terrence Winter (TV’s Boardwalk Empire) from Belfort’s own memoir. The lingering parallels in the as-always lengthy production, however, remain with Scorsese’s mafia tales; if he was to combine Mean Streets, Goodfellas and Casino as a modern musing on mess and misfortune of man’s own materialistic making, the resounding, riotous result would be The Wolf of Wall Street.

The Wolf of Wall Street
Director: Martin Scorsese
US, 2013, 180 mins

Release date: January 23
Distributor:  Roadshow
Rated: R