Well acted and with an interesting subject matter, but too long, repetitive and unpleasant

Rating: 5/10 (4 January 2014)

A biopic directed by Martin Scorsese about the rise and fall of one Jordan Belfort, a Wall Street stock broker who founded in the 1980s a brokerage firm that centered on selling penny stocks using high pressure tactics to small investors. He was indicted for fraud in 1998 and was sentenced for a relatively lenient 22 months in prison. The amoral, drug addicted Belfort is played by Leonardo Di Caprio (this is his fifth film for Scorsese); Jonah Hill is Belfort's main sidekick, Donnie. The Australian actress Margot Robbie is great as the blond bombshell - dumb model - trophy second wife of Belfort. Rob Reiner has an unnecessary extended cameo as Belfort's father. Though the subject matter is certainly interesting and the acting is fine, this film, despite its undeniable brio, is also quite unpleasant with its three hour non stop show of drug use and sordid sex. The movie is very repetitive: we see sex, drug use, a joke involving oral sex, sex, drug use, etc. Moreover, the movie has no characters one can sympathize â€“ everybody is extremely unpleasant (well, maybe with the exception of the FBI agent played by Kyle Chandler, but he appears in the screen for only a little time). Jean Dujardin (the silent movie star from The Artist) has a nice cameo as a venal, corrupt Swiss banker.