Not bad, but Leo and Marty did better already

Rating: 6/10 (15 September 2014)

The strongest reason why I would tell you to watch this movie is possibly that it is based on a true story, unless you really like DiCaprio as you will watch it anyway then. It's another Scorsese-DiCaprio biopic and in my opinion one of the weaker films from the two with "Shutter Island" still being my favorite. The writer here is Terence Winter. Winter and Scorsese already worked together on "Boardwalk Empire".
All in all, it is a decent movie. Di Caprio lets it all out, McConaughey (as Belfort's mentor) shines early on as a businessman who obviously takes no prisoners to make the winnings he wants and we see why he is having a career year and Kyle Chandler does a fine job as a cop where it's really hard to say if he is likable or not. Jonah Hill got his second Oscar nomination for this, a bit of a surprise as he had no precursor results. Also his performance just wasn't that great, even if he was probably better than in the film for which he received his first nod. The Academy really seems to dig him right now. Leo and Chandler going against each other was lots of fun. When we see Chandler's character sitting in the subway near the end as a reference to an earlier dialog, this is probably my favorite piece of writing. Meanwhile Belfort (Di Caprio) still lives off the fat of the land, despite being in jail.
I cannot give it a higher rating than 6 though as the topic and Belfort's life including the Margot Robbie storyline (she is not the kind of girl I have the hots for, but her acting wasn't particularly convincing either) just wasn't that interesting to me. The film, during its three hours, had hardly any moment that was really edge-of-seat stuff like other Scorsese-Di Caprio movies such as the aforementioned "Shutter Island", "The Aviator" or Scorsese's recent take on the history of cinema, "Hugo". It is basically a showpiece for Di Caprio's talent. The film is three hours about him and he shines in it, deserves the Oscar nomination, even if there were performances from 2013 I liked more, such as the eventual Academy Award winner. One scene I did not like that much is when he saved Jonah Hill's life. No, not because of that. I'm fairly certain things did not go the way they showed it here in reality when/if Belfort actually saved his partner's life. Too showy for my taste. A bit more subtlety would not have hurt. Then again, Belfort was not exactly a man known for subtlety I guess.
Scenes that I liked were early on when he makes a huge deal of money with his new company and how he protects Hill's character by letting him know that he carries a wire. We find out that Belfort was loyal to those who accompanied him on his road, at least in the business world, not so much when it comes to his love life.
All in all, it is a good movie with a strong lead performance and also offers an interesting insight into the world of finance, which may suffer from the fact that hardly any of the characters are likable, although that maybe is just the way it is in reality. For some careers you have to sell your own grandmother.