A masterful depiction of human piggishness

Rating: 1/10 (29 December 2013)

Martin Scorsese scores a huge hit in this seminal celebration of human piggishness, rot and squalor. Sure one will face daunting challenges to self-indulgence, but if he tries hard enough and stays the course in dissipation and exploitation, he can become a King like Jordan Belfort, with a fawning, obsequious following. And what's wrong with that? What's wrong with living the good life, by whatever means necessary, if you have the talent and only care about yourself?
Human baseness and predation are honored in the film through Belfort's graphic gluttonous sex and extraordinary drug use, constantly extolled as giving the edge one needs to dominate and manipulate. That, with unapologetic predation, are critical parts of the road map to the good life in the Scorsese model.
And with that, Scorsese proves a master in describing a modern day Inferno (like Dante's) with the new paradigm that being bad is not so bad after all if you win in the end.