No moral compass here

Rating: 6/10 (30 July 2016)

Okay. I confess. I watched this movie in a period when I am writing my own book about how 'business' greed has destroyed any premise of credible democracy. Therefore, while I found the acting good and the film entertaining, I am sick of Hollywood's hiding of its own guilt in this corruption.
Oh, yeah, I am one of those, I suppose, who found the focus on the sex and drugs a little overbearing. These scenes should not be censored. They are 'fictionalized, for the purpose of dramatization', scenes.
That I get. It is necessary for the producers of films to make certain that the audience does not fall asleep in what could be a boring documentary about how a Wall Street wannabe became rich off of corrupt practices. Apparently that means that we should watch lots of nakedness and drugged madness? Because it was based on a book written by the 'real wolf of Wall Street'? Ironically, I had watched the HBO film Spotlight hours before this one. That film I will eventually write a review for and give it a 10. Why? Especially when the friend who watched Wall Street with me also watched Spotlight and found it 'rather slow'.
Ironically, she had to abandon watching The Wolf with me because its focus on the depravity bothered her so.
I found Spotlight powerful because it had good acting and exposed a story of corruption with an attempt to stay honest to the duty of a documentary movie.
Oh, I know that movies are 'the right to make art' out of even 'real events'. It is sad, however, that, two decades after the Belfort case began to evolve, Wall Street remains responsible for bringing down international economies, on the basis of greed. Watch the movie Too Big to Fail that is based on the 2008 Economic Collapse. The same confession: that financiers and stockbrokers of 'America' get blind to moral duty when they are faced with big money, appeared.
What becomes more sickening is the research to the background story to Belfort's history. On July 30, 2016, the day after I watched the movie The Wolf of Wall Street, I stumble across this: Vanity Fair has a a July 26 report that is just starting to be 'picked up' by other media rags ['Wolf of Wall Street' Scandal Casts Wide Net of Suspicion]. Evidently a film corporation involved in making this film took public funds from Malaysia, on the basis of a loan for the film's production.
The article alleges that even Leonard DiCaprio was part of a gambling spree with Red Granite company officials in Malaysia. Investigating over a million blown on gambling? An amount of up to a billion of Malaysian, loaned public funds, are under investigation? I was already cynical about this movie. It insists that it is 'based on real events'. It falls into the depravity of too many modern films from Hollywood that claim to be 'solely for entertainment'.
Sorry. IF anyone is going to portray 'real events', then the events have to be real. Oh, show the level of depravity that Belfort and his gang of misfits fell into. But, the message of daily moral responsibility is lost in this film by its focus on Belfort's lustiness for good times.
Honestly, there are moments when the characters allude to the immorality of the main character. Belfort's 'first wife' raises this issue in a number of pieces of dialogue. And there are other moral challenges made.
However, what is missing here is the alternate side of the whole story. Oh, we see a concerned government agent enter the scene and we see the Belfort character eventually trundled off to jail. But, the difference is that HBO's Spotlight and Too Big to Fail also draw in the stories of the poor who end up on the street or suffering addictions that are brought on by the physical and immoral abuse of power gained.
Hollywood crows that DiCaprio acts very well in 2013. He and most others in the film do. The problem becomes that the film becomes one of the richer films of 2013. That means that a lot of people around this planet 'liked it!' The reality, therefore, becomes that many of those viewers will take in that final note that this film is 'based on real events'. To too many, it becomes a documentary film of real events.
That makes any subsequent honest record, one that challenges Belfort's version of events, something that will not be a necessary watch for the majority of citizens in our nations. Which means what? The Wolf of Wall Street? Watch it for its entertainment value. Cringe at some of the overblown focus on sex and drugs. But recognize that it is art reflecting on a sad man's life.
The greater message this movie fails to make full register of is in one sickening scene. Eager wannabe employees simply want to get what Belfort has: a super rich life style. They push into Belfort's building. They did so after Forbes magazine published a scathing article about Belfort's company's corruption.
Will the movie goer really reflect on what happened to the schmucks who lost their life savings in this farce? This is not even raised in the film's concluding graphics. Instead, we see a 'reformed' Belfort pushing his pen selling techniques on more sales suckers who want to get rich.
Question becomes: will the movie goer muse on the moral obligations or merely become one of the schmucks who so eagerly serve the agenda of the greedy for the sake of their own greed?