Movie Review: "The Wolf Of Wall Street"

"The Wolf Of Wall Street": A-.  After the first thirty minutes of The Wolf Of Wall Street, I made a mental note to yank all of the money out of my brokerage account and stuff it under a mattress.  The film offers a potpourri of white collar crime, including insider trading, stock price manipulation, bait and switch, securities fraud and conflict of interest. Our narrator, Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCapprio), was insanely driven to make tons of money from an early age, and was naturally attracted to Wall Street.  His first boss, Mark Hanna (Matthew McConaughey, in a brilliant but short appearance), teaches young Jordan the ropes, mainly never to put the clients' best interests ahead of your own.  He also demonstrates how to execute a multi-martini lunch.  By the time Belfort is twenty-six years old, he has made $49 million dollars for the year, leaving him disappointed in himself for being $3 million short of averaging a cool million per week.

When Black Monday hits in October 1987 and most brokers are out on the street, Belfort lowers himself to take a job with a small firm in a low-rent office where they push penny stocks, i.e., stocks in companies with such small capitalization that they don't qualify for NASDAQ.  The attraction here is a 50% commission, versus the 1% Belfort was earning on Wall Street for selling blue chips.  Belfort astonishes his new colleagues by using the same slick, high pressure sales pitch that he employed in his former post with the big boys. Considering the 50% commissions he's now earning, he is raking in the dough and soon sets up his own operation called Stratton Oakmont.

Donnie Azoff (Jonah Hill) is a goofball who, although unqualified, becomes Belfort's right hand man at Stratton.  Belfort's inner circle is comprised of his old chums, likewise unqualified.  To say the lads work hard and play hard would not be doing justice to their fun and games.  Their modus operandi, both in and out of the office, is totally hedonistic, decadent and depraved.  I am not sure what separates an R-rated movie from NC-17, but many of the scenes throughout this film certainly must edge within millimeters of the dividing line. On a related note, I wonder how many "takes" director Martin Scorsese insisted upon for those frequent scenes before the actors got Scorsese's vision for the story just right.

Kyle Chandler, who was Coach Taylor on TV's Friday Night Lights, plays FBI agent Patrick Denham. Denham comes aboard Belfort's 150 foot yacht to let the stock scoundrel know that the FBI smells a rat and won't rest until the agency brings down Stratton.  Belfort puts up a brave front, not wishing to give Denham the satisfaction of seeing that the young tycoon is worried.  Will Belfort pull in the reins before the feds comes calling again?

There is a lot more going on with the story other than the FBI threat.  Belfort is a sex and drug addict, with an alcohol problem to boot.  His first marriage disintegrates, and his second to Naomi (Australian bombshell Margot Robbie) is on shaky ground.  Some of his subordinates do stupid things, any one of which could land Belfort in prison.  Even the plan to hide money in Swiss bank accounts does not go off without a hitch.  The script soft-pedals the legal threat from the Securities & Exchange Commission, when of course in real life the SEC carries a powerful hammer in the world of illicit securities transactions.

In my August 31, 2013 review of Blue Jasmine, I wrote "Allow me to make this bold prediction right off the bat.  It will take a jaw-dropping performance for someone other than Cate Blanchett to win the Best Actress Award at next year's Oscars ceremony."  That was five months before the Oscar nominations were revealed, and I am glad to see that Blanchett has, in fact, been nominated.  I still like her chances.  Feeling emboldened by my August prediction, it's time for another. 

The Wolf Of Wall Street is the third time DiCaprio has been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor, and so far he has not taken home the trophy.  (He was also nominated once for Best Supporting Actor.)  I have a feeling this time around might be the charm, especially since he already won the Best Actor Award earlier this month at the Golden Globes.  I have seen four of the five movies starring an Academy Award nominee for Best Actor this season.  Although a case can surely be made for each of the other actors, if I had a vote I would not need to deliberate long before casting it for DiCaprio.  The part of Belfort requires an actor who is handsome enough to attract beautiful women, and savvy enough to make the viewers believe he can orchestrate IPOs (initial public offerings).  On the screen DiCaprio becomes Belfort, who is drug-addled, sometimes violent, other times romantic, and charismatic.  Belfort needs to play it cool with the detectives, but in other scenes he is whipping his underlings into a frenzy to sell, sell sell.  He has it all, but he can't help himself; his "wants" equate to his "needs."  Risk-taking is sometimes its own reward.