The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
The Wolf of Wall Street
Leonardo DiCaprio——————————-Jordan Belfort
Jonah Hill——————————————Donnie Azoff
Margot Robbie————————————Naomie Lapaglia
Matthew McConaughey————————-Mark Hanna
Kyle Chandler————————————-Agent Patrick Denham
Rob Reiner—————————————-Max Belfort
P.J. Byrne—————————————–Nicky Koskoff (Rugrat)
Ethan Suplee————————————–Toby Welch
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Screenplay by Terence Winter
Based on the Novel by Jordan Belfort
“The Wolf of Wall Street” is blow by blow account of Jordan Belfort’s (DiCaprio) rise to prominence on Wall Street. Jordan starts out trying to be the “best” broker he can be, but as he soon finds out the straight and narrow doesn’t pay well. The crash of 1987 forces Jordan out of stocks for quite a while. When his wife spots an ad where a small company trades “penny stocks”. He soon realizes this is a true opportunity and his rise begins. The story is sort of controlled chaos and we keep waiting for everything to crash, but Jordan in his brilliance manages to keep everything in balance. A few things fall and smash but his whirl wind life keeps on going. We see this brilliance in a great scene where they are selling an Initial Purchase Offer (IPO) for a company lead by designer Steve Madden. Steve Madden is asked to inspire the men, so he stands in front of them and is promptly booed into a corner. Jordan steps in with his over the top, never ending energy and when he is done the entire crew is in a frenzy to sell this new stock. Leonardo DiCaprio is amazing once again under the direction of Scorsese, but it was Jonah Hill that surprised me once again with a very good performance. I keep thinking of this kid and “Superbad” but he first surprised me in “Moneyball” where he did an admirable job acting along side Brad Pitt and this performance is better. I was hoping for a few more scenes involving the law enforcement to provide a bit of balance. Agent Patrick Denham (Chandler) has a sit down with Jordan which is a good scene, but I just wish there were more of those scenes. We are instead driven form drunken orgy to drunken orgy in a three hour tale of total debauchery. This movie is based on Jordan Belfort’s book so if this movie is centered solely on the main character it is only because this was his side of the crazy story. This is a good movie that lacks balance but is kept on track by great performances and great direction.
Runtime: 180 Minutes
Production Budget: $100,000,000
Box Office
Domestic: $108,111,652
Worldwide: $305,103,652
CC Rating: 8 out of 10
Screenplay: I could not find the screenplay.
If you liked this try: Blow, Boiler Room, Wall Street.