One long, vulgar, celebration of Macho Hucksterism

Rating: 5/10 (31 May 2014)

I just saw and was quite disappointed in Scorsese's latest. In short, it was just one long, profane, loud, and ludicrous propaganda piece for macho American hucksterism, a long cocaine, sexed-up all-night party prepared for nerds in ties dressed up to act like slick stock salesmen. At times I thought the badly-cast characters (Jonah Hill was a prime mistake) were taken straight from Steve Carell's "The Office", because of the many completely unfunny-yet-see-how-awkward-this-is moments. Also Scorsese's f-bombs and several fellatio references seem to work well in mob movies, but are not convincing in NYC business world. Sure, I get it, it's about the mighty dollar, so people can curse and be as vulgar as they want; but there was nothing but a continuous stream of depravity celebrating this base idea, with absolutely no letup. DiCaprio is very good, and gave it his all, and Scorsese can control a camera like no one else, but his music left something to be desired, but worst of all, the entire film seemed like an out-of-touch artist trying to make a film about a culture which he hasn't a clue about how it actually operates. Very few of the scenes were convincing at all, in how people would act or speak in the business world, even when they were trying to do underhanded stuff. Also, almost no attention was paid to the actual scams, and how they worked, and the real culture of Wall Street; there's no insider view" to this world. Instead, the only "insider view" we get is into a farcical frat-boy mentality of a particular Long Island boiler-room operation owned by Belfort, the caricature minions of which treat him like a demigod, everyone having public sex, urinating, doing lines of coke, and treating all women as hookers. Even if this is lifted directly from Belfort's book, it is not a convincing portrayal at all of how things actually went down. Scorsese seems to be allowing himself to be merely the filmic transmitter of Belfort's self-serving book about his tawdry, and probably highly-embellished, if not fabricated, escapades.
There was a moment in the film, however, when DiCaprio's character made a speech about success and how poverty isn't noble, and how if you believe that you can go work at McDonald's, which sorta made me self-conscious about my own position in US society; after all, I am American.
Scorsese makes a very good-looking movie, and can do over-the-top drug scenes, with some good humor (the quaalude scene at the WASP club was hilarious), but everyone acts like a macho thug, and seems to have none of the inhibitions normal people have in their speech or behavior, to the point of it being ludicrous.
Casino was a great piece of entertainment; my favorite Scorsese movie. Scorsese can do the "underworld" sleazeballs really well. But this shtick doesn't transfer very well when doing the business underworld; it's just too sloppy and blunt to be convincing. You can't put a tie on some cursing, oversexed Neanderthal and expect him to look like a convincing sleazy stockbroker.
Gotta love that DiCaprio, though. He just gets better with each film.