SELL ME THIS PEN

Rating: 9/10 (4 October 2018)

Golden Globe winner Leonardo DiCaprio stars in the title role of Jordan Belfort. Belfort works his way up the ladder making money in penny stocks, i.e. "selling garbage to garbage men." His scheme is to sell these garbage stocks to rich investors due to the high commissions. Along the way he does some illegal transactions as he runs his corporation like a frat party in "Animal House." Having not known money, he and his crew are ill equipped to handle it.
I thought that Jonah Hill gave one of his best performances. The production is awfully long, not wanting to miss out on any details. The film goes into detail to explain to the audience things like IPO and the history and effects of quaaludes. If you note the ludes he took early in the film were crumbly. Those were non-prescription ludes made from a pill press in uncle Vinnie's garage and not too potent. Later they score some real ludes. Having taken the fake ones for so long, they didn't know how to handle them causing them to crash, like the money it was too much too fast.
The main criticism of the film is that it featured over 500 F-bombs. It really didn't seem like that many due to the length of the production. Besides you get numb to it after the first few hundred or so.