Daniel’s review published on Letterboxd:
"It was a madhouse, a greed fest, with equal parts cocaine, testosterone, and body fluids. It got so bad, I had to declare the office a fuck-free zone between the hours of 9 and 7."
In 1987, 22-year-old Jordan Belfort (Leonardo di Caprio) gets a job as a Wall Street firm, where brokers only care for drugs, alcohol and making money for themselves. After losing his job on Black Monday, Jordan finds a new one selling penny stocks to gullible people, and realizes he can make a fortune when he employs these questionable methods on a large scale ...
The Wolf of Wall Street is a biographical black comedy crime film directed by Martin Scorsese, based on the memoir of the same name by Jordan Belfort.
While us real people (luckily) have to follow certain rules and conventions, there's something very endearing about watching characters without any inhibitions on screen, be it gangsters, psychopathic serial killers, and - as it turns out - stockbrokers.
Scorsese's movie more or less follows actual events, even though it cleverly makes it obvious in the opening moments di Caprio's Jordan Belfort is going to be a very unreliable narrator - but who expected anything else?
Despite its three-hours runtime, The Wolf of Wall Street never feels long, thanks to an utterly wonderful script, and basically every line of dialogue being crisp, memorable, and inspired. Large parts of dialogue were improvised on set, and that's the only flaw I could make out, because once or twice it feels a bit aimless.
The film also set a Guinness World Record for the most instances of swearing in a motion picture with about three per minute. Some critics mentioned what they considered a 'glorification' of Belfort's excessive lifestyle, however, if you look a these despicable people (as entertaining as they are) and still want to walk in their footsteps, something must be very wrong with you.
Scorsese assembled a stellar cast for his film: Next to frequent collaborator di Caprio, there's Jonah Hill, of course, delivering a career-best performance. It also stars Matthew McConaughey (in a small, but hilarious appearance - don't skip the credits, by the way), the great Rob Reiner, Kyle Chandler, Jon Favreau, Jean Dujardin, and many more, all outstanding.
But we have to talk about Margot Robbie, who had her big break with this movie. It's not just that Robbie looks stunning and is, as such, already unforgettable, she easily steals every scene she's in with her spot-on Brooklyn accent as well as her incredible dramatic and especially comedic talent.
In conclusion, The Wolf of Wall Street is a hilarious, irreverent, endlessly quotable, highly entertaining dark comedy, as well as a scathing commentary on greed and capitalism, adding up to Scorsese's best film.
I added the movie to my Liked Films - the movies I enjoy the most, regardless of their rating, and could watch again and again.
