Very good, but not exceptional

Rating: 8/10 (3 January 2014)

I'm not a fan of long reviews, but I am certainly a fan of long movies. This movie goes for the three hour mark and in my opinion it hold enough material to use those minutes properly. I went to an 11 PM screening which ended well after 2 AM and the movie actually woke me up. This is always a positive thing for a drama with many characters. So I cannot say it is not interesting or captivating. It is provocative and direct, not just because of nudity and foul language. The lifestyle it shows is a bohemian utopia - sex, drugs and alcohol with no limits. This is what many movies talk about, especially mafia movies which Scorsese is famous for. It has a very similar plot to what "Goodfellas" have. Shows the dark side of society as something desirable and worth fighting for, but as it evolves it shows that such life comes hand-in-hand with failures and frustration. It doesn't look 100% real, but I think this is actually done on purpose because the scene where Belfort drives his car waisted on drugs suggests that all we see on screen is just a hallucination. Yes, I believe they had lots of sex, spent most of their days on heroin and that sleeping pill they mention, but the party atmosphere which they describe is just a hallucination which makes a very attractive movie.
Margot Robbie - what a woman! The moment when she invites Belfort into her bedroom, completely nude, goes into the same book as the famous Sharon Stone scene from "Basic Instinct".
All in all, I find this a bit too similar to "Goodfellas", with a slightly weaker group of actors. So I can't give it more than 8. But it is definitely worth watching.