Great movie with a fantastic performance by DiCaprio

Rating: 9/10 (28 January 2015)

This is a terrifically fun movie. Martin Scorcese offers pitch perfect direction in which nothing is just for show even though for the title character, everything is for show. Jonah Hill is surprisingly good as a jittery stockbroker, although it's hard to believe the guy on which he was based was that odd.
Above everything else there is an absolutely amazing performance by Leonardo DiCaprio. He is clearly taking great delight in portraying the psychopathic fabulist who build wall street firm out of a bunch of penny-ante drug dealers. Of particular note is a wonderful sequence where he attempts to function in a state of complete drug-induced collapse. He is funny, charming, and disturbing.
This is essentially one of Scorcese's crime dramas, albeit with less violent criminals. Here the bad guys get on the covers of financial magazines, and when they go to jail, it's at cushy white-collar prisons where they play tennis all day.
The culture and the people and the lifestyle horrify me, yet I'm sure many will look at a life of hookers, blow, and stealing everything that isn't nailed down and imagining that life for themselves. That's the sad thing about this movie; for some people it's pretty much the American dream.