Does Leonardo DiCaprio even know what a bad film is now? Many will argue that last year’s The Great Gatsby wasn’t up to much, but I liked it. What couldn’t be argued was DiCaprio’s charm and charisma.
Those traits are once again on show in Martin Scorsese’s latest work, based loosely on the memoirs of Jordan Belfort. This ambitious chap had grand ideas to make himself ludicrously rich, and it worked! What follows is years of debauchery, with an addiction to quaaludes and a pervading feeling of imperviousness.
The film is heavily leans towards showing the excesses and crazy lifestyle. We don’t see the FBI until halfway through the 180 minute runtime and even then aren’t too many scenes involving them. I don’t buy that Scorsese is glamorising stealing money and drug taking, but I do feel that he has indulged too much.
In some regard I understand why, as DiCaprio is mesmerizingly reprehensible and depraved. DiCaprio throws himself fully at the excesses of Belfort’s life. A tripped out crawl from a front door to his Lamborghini banishes thoughts of the young chap from Titanic.
So DiCarpio is awesome. I hope I’ve made that clear. But there are two others I need to mention. “Jonah Hill – Academy Award Nominee” is not something I thought I’d have seen when watching Superbad. But here we are watching him match DiCaprio in scenes of their characters high as kites.
Then there is Dujardin. Last year I compared Gatsby to Valentin, and here they are together. For me this is quite simply a joy, with their charming smiles hiding their duplicity. They don’t trust each other, both know it, and it makes for a great back and forth. I could watch these two together all day.
Much like another embellished true story this year, American Hustle, there are great performances and I enjoyed much of it, but The Wolf of Wall Street falls into the same trap of not knowing when to stop. But, it is a better film overall, with Scorsese in fine form after the rather different Hugo and DiCaprio just being so damn good. If you can put up with the running time you’re in for a treat. But it’s this very thing which prevents it from hitting the heights that I’d been led to believe.
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