Review of The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) by Deetoe — 26 Jan 2014

Well, Maybe you would like to go and see this one for its appealing sex, drugs and money promises. However, the film is intriguingly skillful. It uses Scorsese's mastery and that of course along with an extremely able line up of actors and crew in virtually all aspects of film making except one.

The question what does the film tell?

To make a long story short, it basically is a sales pitch.

Scorsese sells us - no matter if we are hungry-for-success-sales-persons or such that feel disadvantaged by the ongoings of financial crisis or stock market in general seeking for insight or if we just want to know what's behind it - he sells us the life style of this super-dooper-bigwig-broker probably as good as it gets.

It's a train of thrill and excitement going uphill and there is a sense of tweaked decency in context of either keeping the game going or not being true to oneself.

Having said that, the film is based on the book of the very broker, Jordan Belfort and, thus, serves as a commercial for it, not mentioning the probability of royalties paid to Mr. Belfort along with the film.

Hence, the film reflects Mr. Belfort's perspective. A salesman who proficiently peddles his story and along with it his view of the world. The insight material and sadly the film making art too chiefly serves as bait to catch our attention.

The man behind this broker's features remains in the dark. There may be a lot of so called private matters, nonetheless, when it comes to questions of Belfort's identity the film draws a blank. Nothing. What drives him? Given the vehicle nature of money, the mystery prevails about where he wants it to take him.

So it is cut down to a fast ride with nowhere to go. That can be fun, sure. But a three hour movie of the world's most celebrated film maker? I don't know.

Why could Belfort go so far away from himself? Why do only external limits seem to have an effect in his world, where and when and how did he loose touch with seemingly all of his inner values, feelings? Such an obviously empty person is hard to bear, despite the excellent performance of Leonardo Di Caprio. So isn't there any human left inside this broker-dummy? The film doesn't tell.

Even when Belfort finally hits rock bottom, how does he deal with real life, his poor past, relatives, friends, loneliness? Well the film doesn't tell. It's cut to tennis in the joint, and cut to a continuous selling career. In this respect, the film, this form of the American Dream without any inner cultural, emotional response, even seemingly proposing the utter irrelevance of such things, unwillingly, is a horror film.

I do not want to spoil your movie night, nevertheless, I have the feeling it's not necessary to embellish Mr. Belfort's memoirs any further. So, go see it if you must, it can be fun, then again, you might as well save the money for a rainy day.