Excess, excess of Everything, so Ultimately BORING

Rating: 4/10 (10 March 2014)

Another Scorsese movie - another over-praised piece of film making. This film is based on the true story of Jordan Belfort, a Wall Street stockbroking huckster, who used legitimate and illegal tactics to sell bad shares to mugs in the boom years of the nineties. Not only that he spent money to excess, and squirrelled it away illegally in Switzerland. His personal life would make that of a debauched Roman Emperor look like a Puritan - cue hookers, strippers, full front nudity, and drugs galore! So, excess is shown.... over and over again. In fact, this three hour pic should either have been a mini series or just two hours of hard hitting condemnation. But Scorsese indulges himself hoping to ping the great US public to reform themselves and their greed - some hope! But he is brave enough to try and attack the self-righteous hypocrisy that stands at the heights of the US financial and industrial power. But basically the main fault of the film is that it is a rerun of his other movies, eg 'Goodfellas.' The character of the FBI agent represents the ordinary Joe who lives on a normal salary and catches the subway home, while Belfort indulges in the American Dream unfettered by ethics or the law. Cue Ray Liotta at the end of 'Goodfellas' bemoaning living in obscurity when he once had the excitement of the high life of criminality with the Mafia.
The character of Belfort is another Elmer Gantry or TV Evangelist Huckster, who can rally the troops to sell anything. And lots of ordinary people follow him from rags to riches by adopting his script and exploiting their fellow Americans. Leonardo Di Caprio fills the role convincingly but remains too one-note to successfully overcome the view that other actors would have invested Belfort with that bit more. the support is good, but not required to do much more than lay back and get a b*** job. The script is terribly repetitive and shallow. While the nudity and sexual intercourse is at times played for real, at others looks prissy which jars. And the drug taking unfortunately does look real and is barely condemned by the director! Too many faults and slowness detract from the bold theme and treatment of excess - a great pity.