Ugly, repulsive, screechy and boring

Rating: 2/10 (29 December 2013)

Save yourself and avoid this one! I give this a 2 only because some of the acting is good. Scorcese is going for something here, so it's not lazy filmmaking. But I feel like I got the message about 45 minutes into the movie and it didn't go anywhere from there. In all fairness, I missed the last 20-30 minutes because I just couldn't take it anymore. Some ruthless cutting of the screenplay would have helped some, but I don't know if there's much to salvage. The experience of seeing this was rather like having a really stressful day at work where nothing actually gets accomplished. A lot of the ladies are beautiful, but the sex is ugly - demeaning to both women and men. Oh, but I guess it's really about Wall Street. And the motivational speeches to the troops go on forever. I don't think there was a scene in this film that employed any economy of storytelling whatsoever. One critic (approvingly) described this as the last half hour of Goodfellas stretched out to three hours and that's pretty true. It reminded me a bit of the single-mindedness of Raging Bull, but was much harder to sit through. I think it's a bad sign when you start hoping that some of the characters will die of an overdose just so they'll shut up.