Sex, Drugs, and Money

Rating: 8/10 (13 April 2014)

The Wolf of Wall Street is a film that depicts the rise and fall of Jordan Belfort who, through greed and corruption, established and led his own brokerage firm to success in the early 1990's. After losing his job at an established financial firm on Black Monday, Belfort fills a position dealing penny stocks in Long Island and subsequently partners with his new friend, Donnie Azoff, to found Stratton Oakmont. Belfort's aggressiveness in the market earned him the nickname, Wolf of Wall Street. Jordan and his team lived high-profile lifestyle full of parties, sex, and drugs (primarily cocaine and Quaaludes). Eventually Stratton Oakmont becomes a very well known firm and facilitates the IPO for Steve Madden, which instantly earned Jordan $20million dollars. Jordan decides to hide his money in an offshore account in Switzerland under his aunt-in-laws name. The FBI begins heavy investigations into Stratton Oakmont, and after ducking and dodging them for a couple years eventually one of his associates gets arrested, spills the beans about the operation, and Jordan is sentenced to prison for 36 months.
I was thoroughly entertained by the film, and found most of the humor in good taste. The comedic aspect of the film is in my opinion is strongest suit. I would have liked to see more character development, and less predictable debauchery considering it was a three-hour film. Although some of the scenes felt repetitive. Leonardo DiCaprio and cast did a great job of building anticipation and suspense. I enjoyed the use of long cuts in certain scenes of the film such as the scene where Jordan Belfort punches his wife in the belly and attempts to take their child from their home ultimately crashing the car in front of their property. There were many memorable moments in the film, and I took from it interesting quotes such as, "The only thing standing between you and your girl is the bullshit story you keep telling yourself as to why you can't achieve it," which Belfort said during one of his speeches.
I believe a different approach to the film would've been to include characters that were negatively affected by Jordan Belfort's exploits. Without showing the effect Belfort's schemes had on his clients the film seems to glorify scamming people out of their money. There were many scenes in which Belfort's clients invest a serious portion of their savings with him only to be conned and lose it all. It would've been interesting for me if within the three hour time slot they included a few scenes depicting this tragedy.