Wolf Of Wall St. Scorcese-Di Caprio Masterpiece Shocks And Delights!

Rating: 10/10 (23 January 2014)

In their film Wolf Of Wall Street director Martin Scorcese and actor Leonardo Di Caprio shock and delight us with a sweet and passionate director-actor collaboration. Scorcese has directed his most coherent artistic parable, providing us with exhilarating fun as well as thoughtful meaning. Leonardo may have become with this performance into the best actor of his generation, both dramatic and-who knew?Comic!The movie rocks and rattles us, providing us with orgiastic highs and depressive lows. We are drawn into Jordan Belfort's (Di Caprio's character) roller coaster, money-sex-drugs immoral existence like a butterfly to the flames.I left the the movie house in a cathartic trance, a sour taste and an alarmed distaste for the ways and values of Wall Street.
On a gut level, I hadn't had so much film fun ever since Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction.(I laughed harder in this one.) On an intellectual and moral level, this film jolts us. Not one weak link in the ensemble of actors. They are all so crude and real and funny as hell. Also, they are as ugly and not-glamorized bunch of motherf--s in expensive suits as I never saw. The cinematography is like a Hyeronimus Bosch hellish landscape. The marvelous script by Terence Winter rings true and delivers the intended message. But no doubt, this is Leo Di Caprio's movie. He brilliantly carries all three hours of it with exuberant dynamic energy, mesmerizing charisma and total credibility. Also funny;stunningly so!
The comic relief is what makes the constant barrage of money , sex and drugs tolerable. The barrage is deliberate, the director wants us to be repulsed, but he makes the medicine go down by adding huge spoonfuls of humor. No one should refrain from seeing this movie because of the bacchanalia. I guarantee you will laugh your head off. The orgy scenes are not erotic, they make the characters seem absurd and ridiculous. Almost every scene has some kind of humor in it,subtle, slapstick, satirical, physical, visceral, tongue-in-cheek. Di Caprio is funny and intense in scene after scene. One long, scene of great physical humor in which Leo's Belfort,chock-full of drugs, drags himself home to alert his buddy Donny(Jonah Hill) of FBI danger, may become a movie slapstick classic.
Leonardo's great acting fête, besides profiting from Scorcese at his godly directorial best, is dependent on a terrific ensemble of actors. Jonah Hill, playing Jordan's best buddy-business partner, is the perfect complement to Di Caprio's acting. I can't over-emphasize how essential Hill's colorful chemistry is in tickling our funny bone, warming our hearts, and keeping the movie rolling.
As Jordan's trophy 2nd wife,Margot Robbie , a ravishing Aussie with the funniest Brooklyn accent,should be commended for her rich and nuanced special performance. Kyle Chandler,in subtle and resonant acting as the pursuing cop, has a read-between-the-lines philosophical banter with his nemesis.In cinema-noir fashion, they have a well written,battle of wits confrontation on Jordan's yacht. Who has the right world view? They go at each other verbally,but no one really wins.Rob Reiner as Jordan's accountant dad, delights us with warmth and humor in some very good scenes. Matthew McConnaughey has a rambunctious,hilarious cameo as Jordan's cynical, first Wall Street mentor. Every role is alluring and well played. Even the stylish Aunt Emma (Joanna Lumley) an unlikely money launderer.
Central to the whole film is Belfort's mentor, quasi-religious relationship as sales guru to his stockbroker followers. The movie's best scenes are the frenzied rallies Di Caprio delivers with Elmer Gantry passion to his rowdy bunch of cohorts. Their loving and symbiotic link is presented by Scorcese with Fellinesque gusto and skill, and played with fascinating brilliance and credibility by Di Caprio.It's hard not to be drawn into the Jordan & Co. emotion-filled rituals. It's hard not to feel for them, albeit with great ambivalence.
We laugh and grieve at the same time. Scorcese takes us once again into his journey into American darkness. Not the mafia this time, but the sins and excesses of Wall Street, and also into the immoral corruption of the American dream. This might be disturbing to free-market entrepreneurs;so the movie may have a built-in resistance for some. Another likely group that may find the movie off-putting, even repulsive, is those respectable citizens who don't approve of sex, nudity and orgies portrayed in films even if it has redeeming purpose.(Movie has been banned by Kenya and some Arab countries.)Too bad. I find the film as good as Orson Welles Citizen Kane, a must-see for anyone who sees film as catharsis through art and a potential instrument in cultural growth. It definitely puts the orgies of stocks, money, sex and drugs into the right perspective. It provides us with food for thought and a re-evaluation of our professional, economic and personal goals, lest we fall as Jordan and friends into the abyss of a meaningless, hellish existence.