The film begins with a polished ad for Stratton, a lion roaming the brokerage as a narrator talks about tradition. DiCaprio’s skill at playing to the camera makes this descent into hell irresistible. Dripping with a kind of toxic charisma, Belfort wants to confess all. As the book did so well, a good deal of the dialogue is directed toward us. PHOTOS: Best films of 2013 | Kenneth Turanīut first Scorsese wants to introduce “debauchery” as defined by Belfort, taking us deep inside his den of iniquity, Stratton Oakmont, the Long Island brokerage he founded with Donnie Azoff (Jonah Hill), a fictionalized character based on his former partner. The question of how an earnest Wall Street trainee, one who refused lunchtime martinis, became a soulless millionaire driven by an insatiable desire for money, drugs and sex is answered. Not Wall Street - he’s banned - but Belfort’s still got game.
A little cooperation at the right time and a refashioned wolf is back on the street. So extraordinary are Belfort’s gains, the FBI and the SEC begin investigating. Taking shoe designer Steve Madden’s company public becomes both a joke and an immorality clause in the film. After nearly 90 years, Rothschild collapsed in the wake of it, putting Belfort and many like him out of a job.īelfort eventually builds his fortune as a bottom-feeder - progressing from penny stocks to blue chips and IPOs. 19, 1987, dubbed Black Monday, the stock market crash heard round the world. Rothschild under the watchful, bloodshot eyes of a cocaine-and-martini-fueled hot shot named Mark Hanna (Matthew McConaughey). He’s been well trained to go rogue at the venerable L.F. PHOTOS: Best films of 2013 | Betsy Sharkeyįor Belfort, life begins the day he finally has his broker’s license in hand.
But the performance is somehow more provocative in the way it traffics in modern-day sins. I guess the wolf is not quite as bad as the sadistic Southern slaver he brought to merciless life in “Django Unchained” last year. But as DiCaprio increasingly proves, he is great at playing the irredeemable. Fierce and in your face, DiCaprio’s performance turns Belfort into the human incarnation of avarice and arrogance. Basically anything money could buy - Belfort did - unapologetically. Most of it was spent on cocaine, Quaaludes, hookers, a helicopter and other expensive toys.
A very fast three hours, “Wolf” is a fascinating, revolting, outlandish, uproarious, exhilarating and exhausting master work on immorality.ĭiCaprio plays Belfort, the so-called “wolf,” a young Turk who rode the market to unbelievable riches - $49 million the year he turned 26. Scorsese adopts the former stockbroker’s irreverent tone, then amps it up so that the film fairly crackles with electricity from beginning to end. The script by Terence Winter stays close to Jordan Belfort’s audacious 2007 memoir of his highly leveraged life. PHOTOS: Behind the scenes of movies and TV
0 kommentar(er)
