The Wolf of Wall Street

Greed is good. That was the unforgettable line of Oliver Stone's 1987 "Wall Street." Here, a quarter of a century later, Martin Scorsese's tweak of that infamous attitude is that greed is not just good, but really fuckin' good...and it always will be. "The Wolf of Wall Street" features arguably Leonard DiCaprio's best performance yet (and I thought the same thing of DiCaprio in "Django Unchained" the year before). He is one of those rare actors who tries to outdo himself with every performance. His portrayal of Jordan Belfort, along with the other acts of barbarism and absurdity, help make DiCaprio and Scorsese's first collaboration, "Gangs of New York," look tame.

This movie is not for the faint of heart. Remember that rumor that Jack Nicholson would snort cocaine off the rear end of a young woman in Scorsese's "The Departed" but it was left on the cutting room floor? Well, something like that exists in the opening moments of "The Wolf of Wall Street." The viewer will either think this is a small component of a larger picture of arbitrary debauchery, or be so disgusted and turn the film off. But the scenes serve a purpose--if you didn't hate Wall Street already, you will really hate it now.

The film starts with Black Monday in 1987, the year I was born. (I entered this world with the worst stock market crash since 1929, and I graduated in 2009 among the worst stock market crash since 1929.) Belfort, humbled by his experience, has to start back at the bottom. He finds a job pushing penny stocks to schmucks (the postmen, we're told; always the postmen), and they're selling garbage to garbage men. It's at this time that he meets Donnie Azoff. Azoff is played by Jonah Hill, who is quickly emerging as one of the most enjoyable actors to watch. Here, he has never been better; possibly the only performance of the year funnier was the one he gave in "This Is the End." But there is also a terrifying sense of malice to him. His monologue--explaining what he would do to the hypothetical child with disabilities he would hypothetically produce with his wife (who also happens to be his cousin)--is, believe it or not, similar to Joe Pesci's famous "funny how?" diatribe in "Goodfellas." In both cases, the intention of the dialogue is to invoke fear. These are funny wiseguys, but they're also terrifying.

The humor is actually one of the things that's so surprising about "The Wolf of Wall Street." When folks heard that DiCaprio and Scorsese were teaming up for the fifth time, we all thought this would be a gritty drama. Instead, we're treated to a very funny movie, one of the funniest of the year. Here, DiCaprio's performance is that of a risk-loving lunatic with a golden toilet. The funniest scene undoubtedly is the one where both Belfort and Azoff take expired methaqualone (commonly referred to throughout the movie as "ludes"), and the drugs only kick in just as the best laid plans of Wall Street rats go terribly, terribly awry. The plan is to have all their money transported to Swiss bank accounts. Azoff screws up awfully and their pickup man ends up in jail. Belfort rushes to a pay phone to get the news (which includes an unfortunate fact that the FBI has been bugging their phones). Belfort has to drive (while essentially in a catatonic state) back to his mansion to prevent Azoff from using the phones. The trouble is that Azoff has definitely been using the phones; he calls the French banker (Jean Dujardin) to tell him that money will be late, but he's barely able to produce any of those required syllables or syntax. The result is confusion and hysteria. "You ate ze money? What do you mean you ate ze money?"

So to say that DiCaprio and Hill are worthy of Oscar nominations is an understatement. Audiences have seen DiCaprio do humorous scenes before, but they've never seen him this funny, and it's widely known that comedy more often than not is much more challenging than drama. Terrence Winter, who worked with Scorsese on "Boardwalk Empire," certainly deserves to be nominated for his exceptional screenplay. Also providing great performances are Margot Robbie as Belfort's second wife and Rob Reiner as Belfort's father, who may have just as foul a mouth as his son but at least is wiser, more cautious, and more long-term thinking. It is surely hoped that they are rewarded with nominations tomorrow.

"How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points?"
-Pope Francis, "Evangelii Gaudium"