Sell me this pen.

Rating: 9/10 (23 December 2015)

With his latest film, The Wolf of Wall Street, Martin Scorsese has directed yet another modern classic. Like 'The Aviator' before it, his latest collaboration with Leonardo DiCaprio is another exceptional character study of a successful playboy whose flaws bring his world crashing down around him. Based upon the autobiography of the protagonist, Jordan Belfort, the story charts the career of a fraudulent stock broker as he works his way up the ladder of Wall Street from lowly telephone operator to the head of his own company, and the inevitable crash that follows.
The film opens with Belfort breaking the fourth wall to directly introduce the viewer to his life at its peak. He presents us with everything he has achieved and - by frank admission of his vices - everything he stands to lose, before whisking us back to the start of his career. This sets the tone of the film perfectly from the outset: Belfort is the stock we are investing in: an unstable commodity who will fluctuate wildly because he is an obvious liability. Over the course of the film he continues this trend. And in sharing his truths with us and us alone, he makes us complicit - bringing us along for the ride whether we like it or not. So we become another one of his marks, sucked in by his charisma.
The acting is first-rate. Even from those in the smallest parts like Belfort's private investigator Bo Dietl, playing himself with a relaxed, unforced authenticity as he appears to improvise dialogue about security risks with DiCaprio. In fact, the seamless improvisation by much of the main cast is what makes this film so enjoyable to watch: McConnaughey's thin-faced, wandering-eyed, semi- hippy financial guru whose brief appearance is so compelling that it predominates much of the film's accompanying trailer; the boardroom scenes where dwarf-tossing and excessive lunch bills are discussed (to the enjoyable outrage of veteran improviser Rob Reiner); Jonah Hill's outstanding confrontation with Jon Bernthal in the parking lot when he reaches for every insult he can think of, and DiCaprio's exquisite quaalude-riddled, epic 10 metre journey from the doors of his country club to his Lambourghini - which is about as good a visual metaphor as you'll see in modern cinema for the argument that no amount of money can buy even a shred of dignity. It is DiCaprio's subtly mesmerising central performance that anchors the debauched madness when events become borderline unreal. He goes from naive first-dayer, to bug- eyed, drug-addled, vein-popping chauvinist financial compere - and all the way back again, notably for a scene in which he suavely tip-toes his way through a verbal minefield to make a savvy proposal of bribery to a federal agent.
This mastery is expertly cultivated by Scorsese; an auteur who seems to have a preternatural ability to determine when his actors are in full flow, how to inspire their confidence and how best to capture them on film. He does this particularly well in a series of scenes beginning with Hill's character (Donnie) and Belfort each taking a particularly powerful type of quaalude. Believing them to be duds, they each take a few more - despite having been told by the supplier to take only one. The dialogue hints that this course of action is a bad idea, but the audience is distracted from this notion by a sobering phone call to Belfort that draws him to his country club. Here, Scorsese slots in an establishing scene of Belfort making the journey, getting out of his car and striding into the building - which seems almost superfluous. Belfort uses a payphone and conducts a tense conversation, absorbing the viewer entirely. Gradually, Belfort starts slurring his words. It suddenly becomes apparent that the quaaludes have kicked in. Then the aforementioned return journey to the car occurs and the task of navigating the steps that previously appeared to be so simple is given a comical, Herculean level of difficulty when juxtaposed with the apparently-unnecessary establishing scene from earlier. It's this kind of complete attention to detail that makes Scorsese's films a joy to watch.
Another example of this occurs shortly after; when Belfort arrives home to warn Donny that he should not be using the house phone because it is tapped. But, due to both his and Donny's intoxication, Belfort cannot make this concept clear to Donny, who is in the process of trying to conduct a call, but failing for obvious reasons. So the exchange is essentially just the primordial bellowing of cavemen, and the most incomprehensible business meeting in cinema history. It is also satisfyingly ironic - given that anyone listening in to the phone call would be unable to glean any information whatsoever from a conversation conducted in that state. At one point Donny begins to choke and Belfort leaps on top him. Then Belfort pauses for a flickering moment, as if he is considering leaving him to die - it would solve his problems if Donny has incriminated him in any way. But he continues and begins performing CPR. There is no allusion to this in the dialogue or narration, and whether or not this was intentionally scripted or improvised by Scorsese or DiCaprio does not really matter. What matters is that it is so creative, and shows such an excellent collaborative rapport between a director and his actors.