Film Review | The Wolf of Wall Street

With this madder-than-fiction real-life tale of drug-and-sex fuelled stock market fraud, septuagenarian director Martin Scorcese proves he still has an exuberant youthful spark, aided by his long-time muse Leonardo DiCaprio.

Teeth clenched, fists beating a tattoo on a random surface. A suppressed scream issues from the gaps of the same clenched teeth and then, the mouth opens to release a loud bellow - it's both shrill and deep, a roar which begins in the tip of the belly. Entirely masculine. Entirely irrational. But it's entrancing. You look forward to the destruction (be it self-destruction or otherwise) that lies ahead...

This is the way Martin Scorcese appears to direct - with energy and verve that hasn't abated even as the decorated filmmaker edges past the 70-year mark - and it's also what he seems to direct most of the time: male characters with immolating ambitons  that are rearing to implode at any moment.

Coming so relatively late in Scorcese's career and featuring his loyal muse Leonardo DiCaprio in the lead role, The Wolf of Wall Street feels both effortless and meticulous, a re-tread of familiar themes (read: Goodfellas) dressed up in a based-on-actual-events parable about pre-recession America.

Based on a memoir crying to be made into a film from the word go, DiCaprio plays Jordan Belfort, a stockbroker who breaks out of his humble origins to become one of the most ruthless players in this already-viscous terrain.

Gathering together a motley group of friends - whose collective business acumen derives largely from marijuana dealing - to serve as his sidekicks, Belfort's firm, Stratton Oakmont, becomes a force to be reckoned with, giving its 'motivational' leader the opportunity to indulge in the stereotypically ostentatious millionaire lifestyle that includes fast cars - white Ferrari, not red - a giant mansion and a beautiful, equally power-hungry second wife (Naomi Lapaglia, played by 'Pan Am' stunner Margot Robbie).

But given that Stratton Oakmont is largely built on a corrupt edifice of double-dealing and stock-broker smoke and mirrors - to say nothing of unashamed, brazen drug use, with cocaine and Quaaludes as consistently consumed favourites - his dealings attract the attention of the FBI, with keen-eyed agent Patrick Denham (Kyle Chandler) patiently biding his time before he moves in to capture 'the wolf of Wall Street' once and for all.

There is a pinch of Mad Men to Belfort and co.'s womanising and hard-drinking in office spaces; but perhaps it's the drugs that make all the difference. Drug abuse is not just a background detail in this world, Scorcese seems to suggest, but it's the main motor driving this morally vacuous and avaricious universe.

"You're a man of large appetites," Belfort's aunt-in-law (played by Joanna Lumley) tells him midway through Scorcese's three-hour epic. It's an accurate enough assessment, if a tad too diplomatic - crucially, Lumley's character is British - and Scorcese never drops the (wrecking) ball in his attempt to illustrate the decadence of Belfort's empire with typical aplomb.

That the film's three-hour running time does not allow for any dull segments is perhaps the best kind of endorsement one can hope for. But this also means that great character moments are allowed. Appearing onscreen for what amounts to a cameo - surprising, considering what a big player he is - Matthew McConaughey makes every minute count as Belfort's mentor Mark Hanna, aided by some cracking lines from screenwriter Terence Winter. Hanna is a Dickensian grotesque of the kind Scorcese likes to pop into his films at random intervals - one of his suggestions to a young Belfort is that the up-and-coming stockbroker should increase his weekly masturbation rate so as to ensure he's "relaxed" when facing the chaotic, rolling churn of the stock market - but in context, he appears to be a perfectly logical extension of the environment he operates in.

It's the kind of scene that will likely end up on YouTube - until the studio requests its removal, that is - along with a protracted 'interrogation' of Belfort by Denham, a wonderfully subtle exchange that builds to a hilarious crescendo as the motives of both players become more and more evident.

Subtlety however was never a marker of Scorcese's work in general and it certainly isn't a distinguishing feature of this film in particular. Allowing for plenty of long-winded (but generally funny) talking-heads scenes and indulging in cinematic devices that would have been taboo for most (soap-opera style voiceovers; fourth-wall-breaking, straight-to-the-camera commentary by the characters) the film is nothing if not confident.

Confident, much like its subject. Certainly a heady cocktail.