Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
Director: Martin Scorsese
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0993846/?ref_=nm_knf_t2
Wolf of Wall Street left me with many conflicting thoughts. I couldn't help but enjoy Wolf yet at the same time kind of feel incredibly icky and dirty about liking it. Wolf is a good, fun film about horrible horrible people and perhaps the biggest criticism is that it forgets that it's about horrible people.
DiCaprio puts in a great performance as Belfort and is totally in his element. Jonah Hill and the rest of the supporting cast are also great. They best word for all the performances is "energetic" there is a certain energy to Wolf that is hard to escape and it radiates through the actors.
It perhaps glorifies Jordan Belfort a bit too much. His pretty terrible habits are painted in too fun of a light and the "bad guys" in this film appear to be the police doing their job. One scene in particular which paints cocaine in a similar light to spinach in pop-eye. It's a little bit daft and unneeded. Jordan Belforts cameo at the end of the film feels like it's in poor taste considering the film just showed us what a bad human being he could be.
All the problems I feel can be attributed to the source material. The film is adapted from Belfort own memoirs and it does feel entirely one sided. Scorsese probably didn't intend to pick a side when it came to Wolf but by the end it's hard to not think Wolf is painting Belfort as "just an American" or even something of an anti-hero.
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