***SPOILER ALERT!***
“Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.” Those oft-misquoted and
misunderstood words were immortalized by Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko in Wall Street, Oliver Stone’s classic indictment of American capitalism and avarice.
Twenty-six years later, it’s remarkable how relevant they still seem, how
little has changed from those ‘80s heydays of power brokers and custom-suited
yuppies. Joining a recent rash of movies concerned with financial issues and
the economy, Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf
of Wall Street starts smack-dab in 1987 (coincidentally the year Stone’s
film was originally released) and traces the crime-fueled and hijinks-filled
stockbroking career of Jordan Belfort. It immerses audiences in the
more-is-everything, morally bankrupt culture of Wall Street executives with a
crazed eagerness, turning into a three-hour-long rollercoaster that somehow
teeters dangerously close to fetishizing their sex, drugs and money-obsessed
lifestyle while still acting as a mostly effective critique of the society that
makes that lifestyle possible.
Responsible for swindling
millions of dollars out of stock buyers through his firm Stratton Oakmont,
Jordan Belfort is a fascinatingly despicable individual, at least as portrayed
by Scorsese and a delightfully game Leonardo DiCaprio. While there’s an
argument to be made over whether this is his absolute best performance (I’m
personally still partial toward Revolutionary
Road), DiCaprio has certainly never been more balls-to-the-wall fearless.
Although he’ll never be mistaken for an effortless actor, always committing to
each role with almost exhausting intensity, the Titanic star has lately developed a looser, more relaxed onscreen
demeanor, and between Inception, Django Unchained, The Great Gatsby and Wolf,
he finally seems ready to accept his status as a movie star, instead of still
striving to be a more mysterious, artsy thespian a la Daniel Day-Lewis. He’s
magnetic here, radiating charisma whether he’s explaining the art of selling fraudulent
stocks or smoking crack behind a diner with an equally unselfconscious Jonah
Hill. Constantly jittery and manic due to his character’s heavy drug habits,
DiCaprio pulls off everything Scorsese throws at him with aplomb; at various
points, he blows cocaine off a hooker’s butt, mimes anal sex after persuading a
wealthy customer to buy penny stock, has real sex involving a candle, and flops
like a worm possessed by seizures from a pay phone to his extravagant sports
car when a particularly powerful drug renders him unable to stand or walk.
Belfort never becomes even mildly sympathetic, but thanks to DiCaprio’s gutsy
performance and dominating screen presence, you can understand why people are
so entranced by him.
Speaking of Jonah Hill, the
traditionally comedic, Judd Apatow-groomed actor proves ideally suited to a
Scorsese flick. The match isn’t as surprising as it might first seem, given
both Apatow’s and Scorsese’s penchant for fast-paced, profanity-laced, often
meandering banter. In fact, on a nuts-and-bolts level, the whole film seems
like a larger-scale, more political Apatow production without the heart (which,
given the subject matter, isn’t necessarily a bad thing). Not only would the
raunchiness, nonstop use of the f-bomb, usually winking misogyny, and un-PC
dialogue of The Wolf of Wall Street
feel at home in, say, Knocked Up, but
the movie’s core relationship is the Apatow-esque bromance between DiCaprio’s Belfort
and Hill’s Donnie Azoff, bolstered by the two actors’ shockingly compelling
chemistry. Relationships you initially expect to be central – his marriage with
former model Naomi (terrific relative newcomer Margot Robbie) or his antagonism
with the FBI agent (a criminally underused Kyle Chandler) assigned to investigate
his firm – are instead secondary.
Throughout the movie, Belfort
gradually begins to see the workers at Stratton Oakmont as a kind of surrogate
family, treating them almost like children that he is responsible for taking
care of and nurturing, even as he deceives and manipulates them for personal
gain. This tension between illusion and truth, promise and reality, provides a
thematic focal point, and as a result, The
Wolf of Wall Street is most intriguing – not to mention most hilarious – when
delving into the quirks and inner workings of the firm, both reveling in and
satirizing the lives of the ultra-wealthy and the capitalist system that
supports them. Cleverly structured like a sales pitch given by Belfort to the
audience, Terence Winter’s bold, crackling script employs normally tired
devices like voiceover narration and breaks in the fourth wall with a freshness
not seen in years. The Sopranos and Boardwalk Empire writer’s TV pedigree
shines through in the film’s episodic rhythm, which turns out to be both a
strength and weakness. On one hand, it results in several masterfully executed
individual scenes (Belfort’s many speeches, a lunch conversation with a nicely kooky
Matthew McConaughey, his yacht confrontation with Chandler’s Agent Denham, the
cerebral palsy stage scene) often connected to each other by voiceover or music
montages. On the other hand, the lack of a stronger overarching narrative drive
means the movie never fully escapes a key trap of biopics: the tendency to
devolve into a series of “this happened, and then this happened” anecdotes,
instead of forming a cohesive, self-contained story.
However, the most prominent flaw
of The Wolf of Wall Street is that it’s
unable to sustain the same level of insanity and delirious energy for its full
three-hour running time, faltering around the last half hour like an addict
crashing after a high. In part because Denham never develops a strong presence,
essentially acting as just a generic law enforcement character, the movie loses
some of its bite once the action shifts away from the Stratton Oakmont offices
and focuses more on Belfort’s personal life and the FBI investigation into his
dealings. As his drug habit and illicit activities spiral more out of control,
Belfort teeters on the brink of coming back down to Earth, a downfall best
encapsulated by a climactic fight with Naomi, but after spending two and a half
hours transforming him into a larger-than-life caricature – more a symbol of
American, masculine decadence and arrogance than an actual person – the film’s
sudden attempts to humanize him fall flat. Because of this, the otherwise sharp
critique of Wall Street ethics and capitalism doesn’t quite stick its landing, becoming
muddled and ambiguous when it should be at its most scathing. A brief scene
where Denham reads a newspaper while riding the subway feels especially hollow,
its intention difficult to decipher. After showing frequent glimmers of
brilliance, the movie goes out with a whimper and ultimately isn’t as
hard-hitting as it could have been.
The film ends with Jordan Belfort doing a self-help speaking engagement,
the final shot lingering on the indistinguishable mass that constitutes his
audience, all of whom sit enrapt, clinging to his every word. Presumably, Scorsese
wants to illustrate that the problems with our modern economy are widespread,
systematic ones, rather than merely the fault of one individual’s insatiable
desire. What it actually does is shift blame from Belfort to his audience, from
the powerful to the powerless. While the movie adamantly doesn’t endorse
Belfort’s actions, it sometimes seems to believe his logic, implying that his
ends – that is, giving opportunities to those who otherwise struggle to provide
for themselves – are arguably justified even if his means aren’t. We’re all
just gullible, desperate suckers, so if someone is smart enough to take
advantage of that, how much can we really blame them? The world’s a jungle, and
the men on Wall Street are at the top of the food chain, treating us pond scum
at the bottom as we allow ourselves to be treated. Greed isn’t good; it’s
simply human nature.
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