Significantly Disappointed

Rating: 3/10 (10 January 2014)

Okay, I did laugh a few times. And some of the settings were nice.
The problems in society practically beg for movies to shed light on the excesses that occur in the financial sector. And given the money, the life style, the extremes, it should be low hanging fruit for Hollywood to exploit artistically. This has been a problem since 1980s, made more intensely urgent by the collapse of 2008 and the bludgeoning of tens of millions of livelihoods around the globe, while the bailout for Wall Street took only 3 days for Congress to cut out. Despite the need and opportunity, the intensity on capturing the excesses and the problems is not being successfully dealt with by Hollywood.
I saw strong ratings for this movie so I couldn't wait to go see it. I had hoped that we had a movie that nailed it on Wall Street current generation. Not really in this piece.
Okay my spoiler:
Overall, I though I saw this movie before, "Goodfellows." By following the same basic story arc, it undermines, in my mind, the quality of this piece, but also, I don't think I'll appreciate the quality I thought I saw in "Goodfellows" again. Its just a story about a guy dazzled by a morally inferior but materially superior life, gets sucked into the vortex of it and then over indulges until reality catches up.
(I really don't consider that to be a spoiler. You knew this story was going to be something like this before seeing, didn't you?)
Part of this, I think, is the biographical nature of the plot. Biographies usually are disappointing to me. DeCaprio has done his share, so me must like them, but they aren't really an entertaining plot line. I didn't really like "Citizen Kane", perhaps the all time favorite of critics, which has basically the same story arch of this film. Maybe Patton was the best (most entertaining) pure (based upon a real person) biography, though in my mind the best movie that uses a biography arc is "Its a Wonderful Life" because we can see, (even feel), the growth and change in character's formation, and it is entertaining. I've always enjoyed "Goodfellows" but have thought of it as sort of a docu-drama on real world mafia that merely borrowed the biography plot line.
(Perhaps more spoilage) Also, this movie could have been cut into half the length. Here we have a guy who wants to be a stock broker because he wants to make money that's the beginning. He stumbles into the idea of pushing penny stocks. Then we have him selling his troops on it (with noted no concern for the clients), then partying (to extreme), then increasing prosperity, then declining personal life, then repeat. In this case, repeat over and over and over again.
The actors in this movie helped convince me how much better the actors were in Goodfellows. Basically I never believed these guys, at least like I believed the guys in Goodfellows.
Meanwhile, we haven't had a good Wall Street movie since Oliver Stone did the original. (Unfortunately, Stone made two of the best movies ever, in the 1980s, Wall Street and Platoon, and hasn't done anything since. Wall Street II was good, I really liked watching it, but it was pedestrian compared to the original).
I'd watch this movie after it goes to HBO or some other cable. I'd also prefer it to be half the length. Once you see one pump up speech to the troops, one excessive party, and just a few scenes from his lifestyle, enough. Repeating that a half dozen times is boring.
In my mind, 4 stars is a great movie. 3 1/2 is almost great. 3 is worth paying to go to see in the theaters. 2 is worth seeing. I give this a 2 and a tenth. Its worth seeing if you have 3 hours to kill, but not worth paying to see. If you like watching Goodfellows every once in a while when it comes on Cable or renting it, I predict, you'll watch this one time, and then go back to watching Goodfellows when you feel like indulging in a Scorsese style film.