In a year which saw the release of The Bling Ring, Spring Breakers and American Hustle, Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street somehow managed to out-gross the rest of the tales of excess and debauchery. This little person-tossin', pill-poppin', prostitute-abusin' extravaganza applies the Goodfellas Scorsese template to white collar crime. It flamboyantly weaves its way through the story of corporate crime lord Jordan Belfort, with digressions and meltdowns aplenty. While it's interesting to see Scorsese return to that mode, Wolf ultimately feels like a pale imitation of his former successes. It lacks the broader focus, tight pacing, subtler sense of humor, and perfect blend of seduction and repulsion that lent Goodfellas and Casino depth and edge.
It should be obvious from the titles, but where Goodfellas showed us what types of people Henry, Jimmy, Tommy, and Karen were and Casino exposed us to the evolving Vegas ecosystem, the Wolf of Wall Street is devoted to Belfort alone. While the singular focus offers the opportunity to delve deeper into one man's psyche, it seems like we know the entirety of Jordan Belfort after the first half hour. He has a money addiction along with a score of bad habits that are only encouraged by the people and society around him. But apart from his right-hand-man/codependent Donnie Azoff (Jonah Hill), the film shows little interest in Jordan's crew beyond cracking jokes at their expense. When the film does show interest in tangentially related characters, it wastes its time on things like Belfort's butler's escapades while failing to make Jordan's second wife Naomi (Margot Robbie) anything but a kept woman/moll. This poor exploration/duration ratio is exemplified by Wolf's use of one of the format's signatures: where Goodfellas and Casino employed multiple narrators to offer different viewpoints and build characters, while Wolf is content to include random characters' voiceover for cheap jokes.