Review of The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) by Ryan M — 18 Jan 2015

The Wolf of Wall Street is as savage a movie as Martin Scorsese has ever made. It's A Clockwork Orange and Caligula in the financial world, a movie about a man so caught up in ambition, greed, and addiction - to drugs, to money, to sex, to ego - that he doesn't even blink or notice as he ruins the lives of the people around him and drives himself into a massive downward spiral. He's gotten too high off the ride, and Scorsese sweeps us right along with him, letting us into this world not through a lens of judgment, but through the point of view of the man himself: stock broker Jordan Belfort, who got his start on Wall Street and made his massive fortune selling penny stocks and scamming the financial system, to blow more money than he could ever spend on a mansion, a yacht, hookers, drugs, and anything else his heart desired. We're entranced and horrified and wait in anticipation for a crash that, unfortunately, never comes to the extent that Jordan Belfort deserves. "This is America!" Belfort screams. The Wolf of Wall Street is the bastardization of the American dream. We watch with horrid fascination. The movie is an indictment of corruption, but we spend the majority of it reveling right along with these white-collar criminals. On display here is, largely, extreme selfishness and self-gratification without consequence. Of the film, Scorsese has said, "The devil comes with a smile.".

Belfort's descent from high ambition into total greed happens quickly. Wall Street is his training ground for ruthlessness. After being introduced to Belfort, we flash back to the days before his great success - to the day that arrived at a stock brokerage firm on Wall Street, and was told that he was lower than pond scum by his supervisor, someone making a few hundred thousand dollars a year. This amount of money is unfathomable to Belfort at the time. The movie's opening narration informs us that at the height of his success, he made $49 million dollars in a year - which really pissed him off because it was just $3 million shy of $1 million a week.

On his first day, suave broker Mark Hanna takes Belfort out to lunch. Belfort is eager to please him and to make a good impression. The restaurant takes up much of an entire floor and overlooks, through floor to ceiling windows, Manhattan's Financial District. Hanna openly snorts cocaine and orders a number of cocktails. He beats his chest and hums a marching beat. Nobody bats an eye. When Belfort seems hesitant to even drink a cocktail at lunch, Hanna laughs and tells the waiter that it's his first day on Wall Street. He'll come around.

The Belfort that Leonardo DiCaprio plays in this scene is characteristically consistent with his portrayal in the rest of the film, but here he is less certain and more genuinely eager to please. Note the glimmer in his eye as Hanna takes a liking to him. Note his hesitation and suppressed embarrassment as he glances around the restaurant before joining in with the marching beat, humming and beating his chest. In this one scene, Hanna, played by a smooth-talking and never hesitant Matthew McConaughey, infects Belfort with the ruthless selfishness that will be the ruin of everyone he comes into contact with (and himself). Hanna tells Belfort that his only obligation is to put meat on the table for his wife. The name of the game is moving money from your clients' pockets into your pockets. That it isn't advantageous to make the clients money at the same time, but to play off of their greed and addiction and keep re-investing their money into different stocks, making cold hard cash on commissions while they are only getting rich on paper. It is all a game where the only rule for the stockbroker is to keep pocketing money and never hang up the phone until a deal is struck that is in the broker's advantage.

Belfort tells the subsequent story of his rise to success and wealth with sardonic glee, mostly through voiceover narration, sometimes as a direct address to the camera. As SEC officials are checking out his firm's documents while illegal trading is happening out on his company's floor, the camera tracks Belfort through the cubicles as he rambles off jargon about IPOs - and then smirks egotistically, saying that we're probably not following him, but the point is, "Was any of this legal?" His smirk grows. "Absolutely not." He walks away. In an earlier direct address, he sips a drink out of a tall, expensive glass and tosses it and half of his drink casually into the bushes when he gets outside, without a second thought.

Belfort seduces us through his narration and with his excessive lifestyle of instant gratification. We see his world through his eyes, and barrel through overstimulation and debauchery without consequence for the majority of the film. We almost never see the effects of Belfort's actions, because we see everything through his point of view. There is a scene near the end of the film in which Belfort recounts a drive home from a country club one mile away from his mansion. High to the point of incomprehension and loss of motor skills on Quaaludes, Belfort speeds back home in his luxury sports car. He recounts his drive home as if he didn't get a scratch on either himself or the vehicle.

The high of drugs have made him blind to reality. The next morning, he wakes up to police officers who show him the full extent of the damage caused by his nighttime drive.

But just because we see mostly just the intoxicating rush of excess and the wealth that Belfort amasses around him does not mean that we do not get a glimpse, if we step back, into the horrifying selfishness and inhumanity of his actions. A friend commits suicide, and he sardonically mentions it in narration and follows it with a quick "anyway" before moving on. His first wife catches him snorting cocaine off of his mistress' breasts inside of a limo, and Scorsese holds on a wide shot from across the street as they stand, distressed and apart, in front of the luxury hotel building. "I felt terrible," Belfort says in his narration. The film then cuts to the inside of his apartment, and the narration continues to say that he asked his mistress to move in with him three days later, and she agreed. He and his fellow board members discuss inviting little people over to the office, so that they can throw them at targets as darts and bowl with them for fun. They refer to the little people as "its" instead of people to avoid liability. He loses all concept of the value of money, and it's terrifying to watch him arrogantly throw hundred dollar bills and whole lobsters off of his yacht after FBI agents as if they were scum and the money was nothing.

Belfort does nothing for anyone but himself, and becomes so addicted to money, sex, and drugs that he pursues nothing else. The Wolf of Wall Street speeds through his mistakes and risks and faults with such blinders on that we don't even realize that we're watching a horrible downward spiral until Belfort hits the bottom. It comes as a surprise to him, as well.

That Belfort brought himself up from nothing and reinvented himself so boldly after the stock market crash is impressive, but his story is a perversion of the "American dream." Still, we watch with fascination. He becomes a master of smooth-talking clients, smirking and laughing to himself at his own manipulation. Cheating people becomes an amusing game. And he rampages his ego in loud, boisterous speeches to his team in the office. He's training a whole herd of people to be just as selfish and amoral in their pursuit of wealth as he is. We are captivated.

As this all comes back to bite him - the bad behavior, the corruption, the illegal trades, the selfishness - the film descends into a haunting sequence of scenes, much to the credit of DiCaprio and actress Margot Robbie, who plays his blonde bombshell second wife, Naomi. A break-up sex scene between them in their bedroom is emotionally brutal. To end a film that presented almost nothing but frivolous sex, their final intimate scene is excruciating, and the look on her face is so completely vacant and spiteful. To end a film that presented up until nearly the end drugs as nothing but a fun, enjoyable high, Scorsese pulls back and we watch as Belfort pathetically rips open his couch to get at his secret stash of cocaine, which he snorts, unable to handle his emotions. For the majority of the film, we linger close by Belfort, engaging in his life. When he gets abusive and violent, Scorsese holds back. We watch from afar. The sequence ends with a car crash and one tiny tear of blood dripping down Belfort's cheek. He did this all to himself.

The Wolf of Wall Street is a wild ride of debauchery and excess that gives us a glimpse into the world and mindset of those who financially ruined the lives of many Americans. And though it is obscene and terrifying, it is a hypnotic ride indeed. The acting throughout the film is all first-rate. Leonardo DiCaprio has never been more ferocious. Jonah Hill has never been more despicable. Matthew McConaughey, in his minor role, makes a huge impact that changes the course of Belfort's life. And Margot Robbie gives an especially powerful performance, particularly in the final scenes mentioned above.

If the ferocious, direct, fast-paced, subjective storytelling of The Wolf of Wall Street doesn't feel particularly fresh or new, it's only because Scorsese has done this before (notably in Goodfellas and Casino) - but The Wolf of Wall Street proves that he's still the best at it. Scorsese and his team brilliantly show us the allure and madness of this world from the point of view of those living blindly within it. If you need the movie to tell you that these are bad people, that's not the movie's problem.