Oscar Watch: The Wolf of Wall Street Review

Martin Scorsese is a living legend among directors. His work has spanned decades and has garnered praise from critics and audiences alike. He will certainly go down in history as one of the great directors, sharing his company with the likes of Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawkes, Billy Wilder, Ernst Lubitsch etc. It is always a pleasure to go into a movie and know that you are witnessing the work of a living legend like Scorsese. The Wolf of Wall Street is a very entertaining film, feverishly directed with the energy that one would come to expect from the director of Goodfellas. Despite the artistry behind the camera the Wolff of Wall Street fails to completely overcome a script that doesn't quite earn its debauchery.

That script is by writer Terrence Winter who is famous as the head writer on the show Boardwalk Empire. Like that show there are many great scenes woven into this script about an extravagant stock broker but these scenes are only glimpses of brilliance in a script that fails to really do justice to the story. What I mean by this is that while the script shows many entertaining scenes of Jordan Belfort's excess it fails to show nearly any of the consequences of his actions. There is barely even a glimpse of the financial ruin that a man like Belfort caused. In fact while the script says that Belfort's actions as stock broker were illegal it never explains the reasoning behind this so the viewer is left feeling that Belfort was merely a guy who partied too hard and got caught. In many ways the film is the epitome of three hours of excess, entertaining excess at that, but still excess without much real substance. The one other positive about the script besides its entertainment value is the way that it manages to keep this long movie moving at a decent clip. So many outrageous things happen that we barely have time to internalize them and this is what makes the movie work reasonably well despite its flaws.

The reason I spent so much time on the script is that I feel like the script's lack of consequence was really the only thing burdening this movie. Mr. Scorsese is at the top of his game in terms of directing and several of the sequences feature incredible style. The acting is top notch because the cast is so meticulously chosen. DiCaprio deserves praise for his exuberance and believability in the role and Jonah Hill delivers another incredible supporting actor performance. Hill is one of the best comedic character actors in modern film when he is given the right character and here he shines just as he did in Moneyball. The soundtrack is well chosen as always and several of the sequences are laugh out loud funny. In fact I would say that Wolf was one of the funniest movies I saw this year and its a testament to the cast and director that this film was so entertaining. For some this movie will be too edgy but for others the lack of consequence in the script will not bother them in the least. Wolf could have been great but because of that one factor it fell to good and that's really more a testament to its legendary director that it wasn't any worse. 3.5/5