REVIEW: The Wolf Of Wall Street (2013)

Run Time: 180 Mins
Rated: R
What To Expect: A montage of exhausting cringe

One of the freedoms of having a smaller niche site is that you aren’t forced to sit around thinking about how to best polish the latest turd that everyone is gushing over, lest you either don’t appease pseudo intellectuals or affect your standing on a site like, say, Rotten Tomatoes.  The truth then. This movie is all show and no go.  For two hours I sat around waiting for Martin Scorsese to actually begin telling a story, only to find that it was just a superficial montage of sex jokes and pill popping.  It’s exhausting crap, don’t waste your time on it.  Hey guys, let’s consider three hours of masterbation jokes for the Oscars.  What does this say about the ‘Oscars’?

The movie follows Jordan Belfort’s life of scamming in the big leagues in Wall Street, reaping huge financial gains.  The movie shows us how he then lived a life of excess.  Problem is, that’s all it does.  For three hours.  His downfall?  Makes up about 15 minutes out of 180.  Some people are calling this a classic, it isn’t.  When you have a three hour movie about a criminal living on the edge, where the FBI get less screen time than the hookers, you have a narrative problem.  A big one.  Some people may be too stupid to see such a problem, not want to highlight it or both, but what it basically amounts to is a three hour Cypress Hill video with a cameo by an FBI investigator at the end.  It has about as much substance as Pain & Gain (2013).  Boring.

Another problem, and I actually Googled this to see if anyone else had raised the issue – they haven’t – use of CGI.  Alright, so your movie has no depth and all you can do is show us a man partying for ten years.  Well at least let us engage in some visual escapism, let us see what it’s like to live like such a rich person.  Well this movie can’t even get that right.  Take the luxurious escape to Italy our millionaire takes… created using horrible CGI backgrounds.  When the man is on his giant yacht – horrible CGI backgrounds.   When they’re in their highrise office, downtown outside is hideously fake.  In the opening even the helicopter looks like a PS2 model.  We can’t even take aesthetic pleasure from this slop.  Intrusive cheaping out.  $100 million – where did it go?  One last problem, the lead actor.  Leonardo DiCaprio, as far as I’m concerned, cannot act.

A tedious and disturbing tribute and love letter from Martin Scorsese to a known felon.  They least he could’ve done was cut it down to two hours.