Nothing Exceeds like Excess

Rating: 4/10 (26 December 2013)

"The Wolf of Wall Street" is the story of a despicable piece of human slime called Jordan Belfort, a lying, cheating, alcoholic, drug-addicted, whore monger who happens to know how to con people out of their money. When his lips are moving, he is lying. His partners are less charming criminals Jordan handpicks because of their character flaws and lack of moral accountability.
The film devotes most of its time to the day-to-day chore of finding and using narcotics, wooing and banging prostitutes and how to dispose of vast amounts of stolen money in the most idiotic, wasteful ways possible.
Where "Wall Street" was somewhat plausible because insider trading is, in fact, a way to grab obscene amounts of unearned money, "The Wolf of Wall Street" is not a film which will satisfy the MBAs or the street-savvy viewers. Scorsese's film is self-indulgent on many levels. It is long, running about 3 hours. It is vapid, dealing only with style without substance. When the film gets a little slow, Scorsese throws in another orgy. Men banging whores. Men banging men. Men banging on airlines. Men getting blow jobs on elevators, in cars at their desks. Public sex, sex at work, sex in the toilet at work. This movie has an army of whores servicing a large number con men.
DeCaprio's Belfort is always humping someone. The drugged, drunken orgy continues for a long time. Jonah Hill, playing Donny Azoff, Belfort's business partner, dons some fake teeth and becomes the most annoying sidekick ever. He is every bit as drunk and sexually perverted as Belfort, but he is profoundly stupid. He is stultifying and sucks the oxygen out of every room he enters. As the film moves forward, you dread the sight of him.
With "Mean Streets" and "Good Fellas," Scorsese provides a glimpse of the world of Italian gangsters. The films ring true. The stories feel authentic. Maybe Scorsese doesn't know enough about Wall Street to create a sense of authenticity. Wolf of Wall Street is disjointed; it changes tone, and it never finds its true voice.
The lead characters are nauseating, and there is hope that Kyle Chandler's FBI agent will bring balance to this film providing a dose of reality with gumshoe detective work, but that part of the story never fully develops. The story would have improved if we saw studies in contrast, like the "French Connection," where the cops are poor and dedicated as they observe the massive benefits of the lawless life.
In the end, the orgy peters out. There are some unhappy vile people who get much more than they earned and much less justice than they deserved. Scorsese may be saying that this is how the world works. The cops take a pathetic plea agreement, and the con men blow up the world without paying much of a price for it. But Scorsese was seduced also. He could not take his eye off the whores, the drugs, the cars, the mansions and the glitz long enough to tell a story about money and Wall Street.