Great movie-making, DiCaprio astonishes...but it's a bit all the same, all the time

Rating: 7/10 (16 January 2014)

The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
First of all—yes, this is a zany, hepped up ride, and it's intense and tiring and impressive. But
As crazy as the hedonism here is, this is a notably straightforward telling of the tale of a stockbroker's rise and fall. And as energized as it is, it's also monotonous. You can't quite say it's boring—or maybe you can, because after the fifth or fifteenth party overflowing with drugs and prostitutes you go from numb to restless —but it occurs to you later: the story is thin, as a narrative structure.
Too bad. This could have been edited to a 90 minute movie—it's TWICE that as it stands—and it would have had even more velocity and energy. And maybe a few details would be left out, but you know what? They wouldn't matter! In fact, all that matters is the single large arc as Belfort builds a stock trading company out of nothing—out of a garage, literally—and then sees the FBI roll in toward the end.
Don't get me wrong—Leonardo DiCaprio is amazing, covering the whole terrain from drugged out of his mind to inspirational speaker, from down in the dumps to innocently hopeful. He's so "on" in every scene it's a marvel. And around him are some equally strong players, such as Jonah Hill as his second in command. The women have less to do (more on that in a sec) but the woman playing Belfort's wife, Margot Robbie, gives the character more depth than you might expect, and with a great New Yorker working class accent.
Scorsese directs this as he always directs—with absolute force. He doesn't know the word subtle, which is fine (which is great overall—we have other, subtle directors). Whether you look at "Shutter Island" or "Hugo" or this movie (all recent examples), you see someone who is worth following closely. He's one of the great directors we have. If all of these movies have flaws, they have so many other things going for them you end up impressed, and maybe even moved.
But moved—emotionally moved—is not the result of this film. You can say that was on purpose (people have). Fine. But that means the bacchanalia is what it is. You watch and watch. And it's such a man's world—and I mean men with their testosterone unchecked, supplemented, worshipped—that women are almost totally there as toys and companions. For sex and for sex. It doesn't matter if you agree or not, if you're a woman or not, or if you have politics on this one way or the other. It remains clear that we see nothing from their point of view, and we are made to accept (as a viewer in a chair) this unevenness. It's actually sickening, if you give it the time of day. And if you really study it, you see that "The Wolf of Wall Street" is yet another film that trumpets a male over female system as good, or as inevitable.
Maybe it is! (I'm not defending sexism here, hold on.) But maybe you need the testosterone to be as greedy, cruel, mindless, and driven as all the men in this movie are (including the FBI guy in his "dignified" way). Maybe this is another way to condemn the mosh pit of Wall Street completely. Maybe there's another way to run an economy, to have corporations make things in a competitive world.
Probably not, but you do strain a bit to give the movie some rationale. The real content here is more gut level—intensity and insanity. It's amazing. But it is what it is, too, an expert docudrama with surprisingly few surprises.