Better than American Hustle

Rating: 8/10 (24 December 2013)

Wolf is concerned with one thing and one thing only:excess and at 3 hours it could have been a tighter film if it had clocked in at 2 1/2 hours. At 3, there's a lot of repetitiveness as if Marty thought the audience needed Thor's Hammer to drive the point home. If Hill pushes Rush's exceptional Bruhl or Hustle's heartbreakingly terrific Renner out of a nom, I will be so mad.
This isn't Leo's best performance for me but he was dependably solid. That he wanted to bring Belfort's story to the screen is commendable indeed. He doesn't sugarcoat the man's excesses and for the audience is more of "Hey people really live these kinds of lives!" Belfort as Leo portrays him was alternatively defiant, occasionally sympathetic but always boisterous. Wolf can be seen as a complementary piece to American Hustle;just the methods to achieve such differs.
Because Leo and Marty have corroborated many times in the past, their bond/ trust is palpable here. Leo is/was comfortable in doing certain scenes here for Martin that he otherwise would not have done. To put it simply, white collar crime as depicted in Wolf is rendered OK in the sense this is how one man chose to lead his life and his cohorts who merrily went along with it. But Scoreses does show the downside; perhaps not as much as he should have.
For myself, Wolf is highly entertaining and noms are mostly likely for Best Picture/Best Actor/Cinematography/ and perhaps Best Director.