Review of The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) by Master Xi-Ying W — 14 Dec 2014

You know those movies you sit through, waiting and waiting for them to get better --but they never do-- and then you curse yourself for wasting a whole three hours of your life? Well, what do you get when you cross director Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio, and a bunch of Playboy bunnies? Why, of course you get an incoherent, three-hour glorification of debauchery, drugs, and greed. Truly, the only things which rolled the plot along (and the term "plot" is used loosely here) are the relentless strings of orgies and f-bombs.

Jordan Belfort (DiCaprio) starts off as a Wall Street intern in 1987, right before the huge market crash. He loses his job, ends up selling penny stock out of a garage, and eventually works his way up to penthouse apartments, mansions, beach houses, and 100-foot yachts. Through his company, Stratton Oakmont, he makes a series of unscrupulous, downright illegal investments until he comes under the FBI's radar. Rather than behave with more discretion, Belfort simply smuggles millions of dollars to Switzerland and amps up his hedonistic lifestyle. When he wrecks his yacht off the coast of Italy, he is "scared straight" and decides to clean up his lifestyle, but it is already too late. He has thumbed his nose at Uncle Sam too many times and gets ratted out by his Swiss banker. His wife takes their children and leaves and, after he agrees to implicate most of his Stratton Oakmont partners, he is sentenced to four years. When he is finally released, he ends up teaching sales seminars to wannabe marketing millionaires. So much for "plot.".

Perhaps the most entertaining part was when Belfort so got twisted on quaaludes that he could only ooze out of his country club to drive home and get into an inebriated brawl with his best friend, Donnie (Jonah Hill). Moreover, the only character with any real depth is Jordan Belfort's father, Max (Rob Reiner).

Truly mind-boggling is how this insufferable turd evaded an X-rating. Michael J. Fox handled the subject with more wit and class in "The Secret of My Success." The "Wolf of Wall Street's" one redeemable quality: it reminds us why we stopped watching dramas and switched to cartoons, monster movies, and Sci-Fi.