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.
In accusing The Wolf of Wall Street of lacking pacing, though, am I undervaluing a match of form to story? Maybe Scorsese's numbing, bloated film is supposed to echo Jordan's numbed, excessive lifestyle. It's possible that Scorsese's inclusion of every lurid detail of the story is intended to make us eventually yawn at the debauchery after we're desensitized to its ludicrousness. In that case, is the running time a necessary evil? If it were solely the film's contents that drove us to the desensitization, this might be true, but I found myself partially bored by the 1980s images of excess rather than their repetition in the film. The behavior in the Wolf of Wall Street may be well beyond the pale, but manic drug use, tossing up bands of cash, and money-seeking floozies are now the stuff of cliche rather than comedy. In comparison with the weirder overboard moments in 2013 cinema*, Wolf's obsession with sex, drugs, and cash seems almost conservative. If the film is truly intended to be a satirical comedy, as the filmmakers and the Golden Globes claim, the images of excess should be garnering laughs rather than just disgust and boredom.
Within the lavish mess, though, there are a few fine elements. Matthew McConaughey's brief appearance as the jaded veteran Mark Hanna establishes a vision of Wall Street culture that Jordan embraces wholeheartedly. As with Goodfellas or Casino, Wolf - through its focus on Jordan's penny stocks operations rather than any mainstream Wall Street malfeasance - is interested in someone who embraces a group's culture but still remains an outsider looking in. The film's final shots of Jordan's eager audience and the law-abiding FBI agent (Kyle Chandler) reveal that greed and jealousy go beyond just the white collar criminals at Belfort's company**. The chemistry of DiCaprio and Hill lends credence to Jordan and Donnie's professional and personal relationship. In fact, it is this pairing that makes for the film's finest scene, in which a heavily Quaaluded Jordan attempts to simultaneously stop and save Donnie. DiCaprio's performance in it is a masterpiece of dark physical comedy, as he drags himself to Donnie's rescue with the help of his version of Popeye's spinach (see: cocaine). The tragicomic sequence is the funniest in the film, with its only drawback being its raising the question of why there couldn't be more scenes of this caliber in a 3 hour film. The effect of these exceptional moments is ultimately lost, as they're blown - like so much cocaine - into the messy, seemingly endless asshole that is The Wolf of Wall Street.
* See: Amy Adams's bathroom screaming or Bradley Cooper's hilarious and belittling impression of the staid Louis C.K. character in American Hustle, the rendition of Britney Spears's "Everytime" or James Franco fellating a gun in Spring Breakers, the Roman dance clubs of La Grande Bellezza (though perhaps this comparison is apples : oranges).
** (Though this indictment might feel more earned if we spent more than just the closing shots seeing the greed of ordinary people)
Can you spot three famous directors hidden in the cast? If you said Rob Reiner, Jon Favreau, and Spike Jonze, you'd be wrong. Spike Jonze was never famous, just critically-acclaimed.
A punny friend noted that, in swallowing a fish, Jonah Hill took the "Pesci role" to another level.
Further evidence of Wolf as Scorsese lite includes the soundtrack, with choices that range from the well-worn to the inane.
Crew & Cast
Directed by Martin Scorsese (Goodfellas, Mean Streets, The King of Comedy)
Written by Terence Winter (Boardwalk Empire, The Sopranos, Get Rich or Die Tryin'), based on the book by Jordan Belfort (The Wolf of Wall Street, Steve Madden IPO)
Cast
Leonardo DiCaprio - Jordan Belfort
Jonah Hill - Donnie Azoff
Margot Robbie - Naomi Lapaglia
Matthew McConaughey - Mark Hanna
Kyle Chandler - Patrick Denham
Rob Reiner - Max Belfort