Great, not perfect...

Rating: 8/10 (3 June 2014)

I've always been a fan of Martin Scorcese's work. He's had great cooperations with Leonardo Dicaprio before, so for me, this was a must see. However, I have some mixed feelings about the result.
On the upside I thought the level of acting was great. I have always been a fan of Leonardo Dicaprio's work, and, even though I didn't feel that much sympathy for his character, he portrayed Jordan Belfort beautifully. Jonah Hill did a solid job as well, and I liked the absolutely gorgeous Margot Robbie very much (and not just because she didn't leave much to the imagination). As you can expect from Martin Scorcese, the movie is very well made, the photography was great, and the music supported the scenes very well. As far as atmosphere goes, you could really feel the madness. And last but not least, I was happy there was room for some humor.
On the downside, I felt it was a very superficial portrait. I haven't read the book, so I don't know how close the storytelling of the movie is to the book, but at times the movie felt like a giant collection of moments out of Jordan Belfort's life, rather than the story of his life. Even though the movie lasts for three hours, there's little or no room for character development. The focus was also continuously on Jordan himself and his side of the story. For example the whole fraud aspect was shown as his big success. There was no room for his victims in the movie. The investigation by the FBI was also rather non existing, as is his relationship with Naomi. After he gets to know her and marries her, she almost completely disappears to the background.
In conclusion, it's a good movie, with a powerful portrayal of Jordan Belfort, for which I'm still giving an 8/10. However, the story could have been told better, making it more of a story, allowing characters to develop and showing more than just one side of it.