An above average approach to a below average genre.

Rating: 7/10 (3 January 2014)

The Wolf of Wall Street is, I believe, an auteur's take on breaking conformity with a very conforming film. Scorsese's latest flick stars frequent (mediocre) collaborator Leo DiCaprio as a Wall Street stockbroker who invents the rules of the market as he goes along, to unmatched success and unmatched downfall. Does this story sound like a typical kind of film? We've seen it with Raging Bull, City of God, and countless other gritty R-rated flicks throughout the past thirty years or so. As such, a format like the typical rise-and-fall plot allows for little use of creativity.
Scorsese, I believe, recognizes this. The Wolf of Wall Street is not particularly gritty as far as violence is concerned, and one never cares a large amount about any of the characters, as they do in a film like Raging Bull, or, in a more similarly themed, 2013 film starring DiCaprio, The Great Gatsby. I'm reasonably sure that this was an intentional choice on behalf of Mr. Scorsese, as he makes other artistic decisions to defy the shallow mold of a genre which he is confined to. Wolf's predictability is easy to tell; from the minute the audience sees Jordan Belfort bragging about his life, the inevitable end is only a long three hours away, and we anticipate it will conclude with Belfort much less wealthy, possibly having learned a life lesson.
But there is no life lesson in Wolf. Scorsese's self-indulgence rivals even the great Fellini's at times; the difference being that Fellini is so great a director that I don't particularly mind Fellini's over- indulgence of whatever film aspect he chooses to obsess over, whereas with Scorsese, I feel as though he is not a fully mature filmmaker (or rather, he has hit-or-miss maturity), with Wolf being a little low on the maturity scale. Yes, it's got humour, it details rags-to-riches-to- rags, but I don't feel as though there's quite enough creativity to hold up Wolf to the genre that it's inevitably placed in, as there is in City of God or Raging Bull. The reason why those two films are superior to Wolf? We care immensely about the characters in the first, and the acting and grittiness of the second.
The ability to sympathize with characters in a film is no mandatory requirement; but when one makes a character study three hours long with little to really go off of as far as identification goes, it certainly helps. Belfort is never in any real tension - but do we, the audience, actually care? My answer is not particularly.
Many critics fault Wolf's excess in profanity and partying as immature, and while I agree with them to an extent, I don't feel as though it's a nail in the coffin for the film at all. Those opposed to these critics cite that the film is a dark comedy or a heavy satire of this exact debauchery that the film depicts, but I don't fully buy that. Say what you will, but there is no excuse for the amount of raw excess in Wolf, except for indulgence on the director's part. Unlike many satires, however, Wolf is very funny; but I feel that much of its humour stems more from individual comedic situations rather than a satire of the high class as a whole.