A film that contains dwarf throwing and gratuitous blowing of cocaine up a prostitutes bottom in the first two minutes is a film that sets the bar high (or low, depending on your perspective) but the Wolf of Wall Street is a film that unashamedly sets out to show the worst of the 1980’s excess in the best possible light. Based on a true story, the main protagonist Jordan Belfort arrives in New York with a young (and particularly unattractive) wife, with the aim of becoming a stockbroker. The film charts his meteoric rise and his subsequent fall, with plenty of the 3 hour running time devoted to Bacchanalian debauchery of the highest order. If you can imagine it, these stockbrokers got up to it, along with plenty I couldn’t have imagined in a million years. I also learnt quite a lot about Quaaludes, particularly the supposedly legendary Lemon 714’s.
At it’s heart, The Wolf of Wall Street is the blackest sort of black comedy. Nothing DiCaprio does seems to be inherently evil (well aside from banging half the prostitutes in New York) to the point where you completely lose empathy for the character, partly it must be said because the misery he inflicts is often kept off screen; rather he comes across as a soul completely out of control and on a rollcoaster he neither can nor wants to get off. And good lord, it is one funny film as a result. Although my wife wasn’t that impressed with DiCaprio’s performance, saying he was basically reprising his role from The Great Gatsby, since I haven’t seen that particular movies, his performance for me was just about perfect. Belfort is an man of addictions- drugs, sex, prestige and money, all mixed together in a dangerous cocktail of madness.
It’s a film you have to see, if only for the utter depths of human depravity and ingenuity.
