A Maddeningly Ferocious Genre Of Cinema. ♦ 70%

Rating: 7/10 (13 April 2014)

This is not black comedy, this is utter boldness. It climbs on your body and takes hold of your whole damn face and then barks on your ears, flashes on your eyes & talks sitting on your mouth. This is cinema at its most vulnerable phase, harnessed to tell a story which cannot be told in any other possibly charismatic way.
Martin Scorsese has fascinated me with his themes and not his works themselves; he finds details in the simplest story & barfs it into hell of a script. With The Wolf..., he does the same. Telling a story was not enough, so he extrapolates. The life & times of a maverick stockbroker told from all points of view. There is nudity, sex, drugs, porn, society, money, business, animals, wild human beings and genius. 3 hours of maddeningly extraordinary tale of a person concludes to a magnificent climax and that is what I loved about it the most, the climax.
The performances are immense and intense. Leonardo DiCaprio is hands down, a phenomenal actor. Jonah Hill has catapulted his power & career to the space. Supporting cast is excellent. The music is good but I am not happy with the editing, which could've been more tight had they given attention to the post-processing.
But, the question is do we need such hybrid boldness to depict something so simple? It solely depends on the watcher. I for one got bored at some point in the film with all the shenanigans the mischief machines do during the second half, but the humor kept me hanging there. It also is factor to consider that when you observe closely, it talks nothing new as such. So, with a brilliant screenplay, what does it achieve? Maybe send a message? Nope. The message is already conveyed by some other movie. All it does is imbibe audacity into the themes of power, money, corruption & sex. But I appreciate what the makers have done to give respect to the talent of Jordan Belfort.
BOTTOM LINE: Everyone should give this a try & think for themselves how it can be analyzed as a cinema & where it stands aesthetically & culturally. For movie buffs, this is a good 3-hour noon show. Nothing more.
Can be watched with a typical Indian family? NO (It has all the things Indian parents don't approve of; so it'd be better if you don't even utter the title of the film. It is also the film with most use of the F word, FYI.)