Wolf of Wall Street, The (2013) [Blu-ray]
Biography | Comedy | Crime | Drama

Sex. Money. Power. Drugs. Brace yourself for an outrageous true story from legendary filmmaker Martin Scorsese that critics are calling "a masterpiece for a new generation." (James Verniere, Boston Herald) Leonardo DiCaprio delivers "the best performance of his career" (Claudia Puig, USA Today) as a young stockbroker hungry for a life of non-stop thrills, where corruption was king and more was never enough. His rise to power earned him the title The Wolf of Wall Street. Together, Scorsese and DiCaprio deliver a story of American excess that is "an absolute blast from start to finish." (Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle)

Based on the true story of Jordan Belfort, from his rise to a wealthy stockbroker living the high life to his fall involving crime, corruption and the federal government.

Storyline: In The Wolf of Wall Street DiCaprio plays Belfort, a Long Island penny stockbroker who served 36 months in prison for defrauding investors in a massive 1990s securities scam that involved widespread corruption on Wall Street and in the corporate banking world, including shoe designer Steve Madden. Written by anonymous

AFI:THE WOLF OF WALL STREET howls at a moon hanging high above an atavistic America. This cinematic exploration of excess is a cautionary tale, administered like a dangerously addictive drug by a master of cinema. Here, Martin Scorsese and his talented team - with Terence Winter's script as guide - write another chapter in the history of New York crime families, with Leonardo DiCaprio's fearless performance hypnotizing those who believe that money matters above all else. Complicit in his transgressions is an all-star ensemble - with Jonah Hill emerging as his colorful partner in crime.

Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Martin Liebman on March 14, 2014 -- The wolf is known as both a social creature amongst its kind, and particularly within its pack, and the devourer of anything else that gets in its way. It's an attractive but fearsome animal. It's sleek, refined, capable, and very dangerous. It's the perfect metaphor for the man who notoriously rose to power in the 1980s stock brokerage scene, the man who made himself a fortune and guided others to countless millions by choosing the right friends, knowing his enemies, and pouncing on every opportunity with the cunning, smarts, and determination necessary to not crush the competition but to rise to the top of his field, to quite literally become the "king of the world," or at least the world his vast fortune but narrow focus had built. But as these stories tend to reveal, his meteoric ascendancy wasn't built only on sweat, smarts, and lawful business practices. The story of Jordan Belfort is one of a rapid rise in wealth but an equally rapid personal descent into chaos, a life built on towers of cash but tumbled by sex, drugs, and a singleminded focus on wealth creation by any and all means necessary -- no matter how destructive -- that might even make Gordon Gekko stop and consider the ramifications. Director Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street is notoriously vulgar and frank yet beautifully crafted and endlessly captivating in its recreation of a story that validates the dangers in too much of a good thing. Of course, whether anything in Jordan Belfort's life can be considered "good" is the secret little subtext beneath the chaos.

The Wolf of Wall Street tells the story of Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio), a man with aspirations of the wealth and easy life of the Wall Street stockbroker. He quickly learns the ropes under the guidance of Wall Street veteran Mark Hanna (Matthew McConaughey), an executive who is a reflection of everything Jordan wants. He's rich, confident, and knows the system. Mark advises cocaine, hookers, and masturbation as the keys to Wall Street success, advice Jordan takes to heart. Just as he's coming into his own, the stock market tanks, his firm closes its doors, and he's left without a job. His ambition to work the system leads him to a small, out-of-the-way firm that deals in penny stocks and pays a hefty 50% commission. He dazzles his co-workers and continues to expand his knowledge base. He sets out to start his own company: Stratton Oakmont. He's joined by his ambitious neighbor Donnie Azoff (Jonah Hill) and the business grows quickly, operating under the goal of selling wealthy clients blue chip stocks, gaining their confidence with good returns, and pushing the lower priced and higher commissioned penny stocks afterwards. As his success increases, Jordan's life becomes a blur of women, sex, booze, and drugs, both in the office and behind closed doors. He woos and weds the sexy Naomi (Margot Robbie) and feels unstoppable, even as FBI agent Patrick Denham (Kyle Chandler) methodically investigates Jordan and his firm.

Like so many of the great films, The Wolf of Wall Street delves deeply into doubled-edged territory. It's a superficially rambunctious procedural, a fairly standard portrayal of the classic rise and fall of a man who has allowed money and power to outwardly corrupt him, a corruption that seeps within and flows down to his very soul. There's the obligatory law enforcement pursuit and the cat-and-mouse game between Jordan and Denham, with pleasantries that proceed the profanity and all manner of manipulation coming from both ends, the temptation of money from one and the focus on the straight-and-narrow on the other. The film's darkly humorous portrayal of all the excess in Jordan's life -- the drugs, the women, the office shenanigans, the parties that cost a lifetime's salary, and the inevitable mental and physical collapses that only seem to reinvigorate the addict's drive to make more money so he may party harder -- is of course its key outward element and certainly the driving force behind all of the dramatic undercurrents both seen and unseen. Where Scorsese wins over his audience isn't just in pointing the camera at three hours' worth of mayhem but rather subtly reinforcing the story's themes on excess, personal failure, inner corruption, and outer collapse through the prism of easy living turned taxing existence. The story's highs are deliberately displayed to oftentimes dizzying superfluousness and only serve to drive the lows deeper and push them harder until Jordan's bubble bursts, not with a spectacular bang but rather a fizzling disappointment, leaving behind only the shadow of the hubris, greed, debauchery, and unhealthy lifestyle that had become a way of life that transformed into, for a time, no life at all.

It's a fine line the cast and crew walk, and they walk it with a precision balance that puts Cirque du Soleil to shame. The film's party-hard exterior depicts the undeniable, uncontrollable, and unbelievable spin into both real and hallucinatory excesses where only the next high, the next girl, the next sale, and the next addition to the bank account matter. When that world threatens to collapse, it's only back to the source of that collapse in hopes of not necessarily masking it but at least using it as a crutch to find a way out. After all, snorting drugs, sleeping with women, and drinking to excess created a brand new world of wealth, privilege, and escape from the everyday realities of life; certainly when all hope seems lost, they will again hold the answer and the avenue of escape back into their safety net that is a disconnect from reality or the illusion of a hyper-reality. The picture's ambition and purpose, then, are tied deeply together as a unified curve that flows high above and well below a straight line of status quo, or perhaps better said a balance between life's good things, life's bad things, and man's innate and learned abilities to celebrate the former and cope with the latter.

The Wolf of Wall Street displays Scorsese's steady hand, keen understanding of structure and purpose even in the harsh glow of the film's portrayal of hard-living excess, and deep understanding of and appreciation for the medium's narrative capacity to tell a compelling, meaningful story through the lens of a meaningless life. It's one of Scorsese's finest efforts, certainly not appropriate for easily offended audiences but clearly a compelling case for cinema's ability to counterbalance outward frivolity with inward profoundness. In the film, Leonardo DiCaprio continues his progression from teen heartthrob to a more mature actor of tremendous skill and natural gift of both screen presence and intimate understanding of character development and portrayal. His effort shines more brightly than perhaps any other role the actor has undertaken so far. He commands the screen at every extreme, capturing with blunt effectiveness the outward lifestyle and revealing the inward damage -- damage the character both readily and indirectly accepts and denies -- with remarkable efficiency and believability. His supporting cast is terrific; Jonah Hill turns in a career-defining performance as the de facto sidekick, the partner-in-crime, the man who rather than serve as a counterweight to Jordan's excesses is like the devil on the shoulder who only further promotes the descent into unhealthy decadence and personal collapse for an admittedly lengthy moment of glory.

The Wolf of Wall Street takes viewers on a fascinating journey from nothing to something to everything and from everything to excess to the end of the run in the life of a man who thrives on his overpowering ego and his endless drive to score the next high, bed the next woman, and pad the bank account. The film decries none of these things, but it does decry them, and anything, really, in excess, and in particular the excess displayed inside the corrupted halls of Stratton Oakmont. The picture thrives on balance, even as it plays up Jordan's excesses almost to a breaking point. The film zooms well past the point of no return early on and will certainly offend many viewers with its unabashed depiction of wealth-induced narcotic, sexual, and verbal indulgence, but within that chaos is a purpose that trumps all of the visual and aural mayhem. It's easily one of the year's finest pictures and a must-see for audiences that can compartmentalize the film's structure and purpose and find the beautiful interconnect between them. Paramount's Blu-ray release of The Wolf of Wall Street disappointingly comes with a single supplement. Video and audio qualities, however, are expectedly brilliant. Though the release has "double dip" written all over it, fans won't want to wait to experience the movie again or for the first time. Highly recommended.

[CSW] -2.9- Way too long, way too loud, way too redundant. I have to admit it was highly entertaining on most levels. At least at first; by the beginning of the third hour, I wished I could press the Mute button and fast-forward. We get it, you're a coke-crazed money addict!! But even with the extended length, it left too many questions unanswered about the aftermath. Leaving aside the "greed like this ruined the US economy" issue, the utter lack of sympathetic characters in this film made it wearying. Even though the all the performances were great as was the art, direction, and script, I could hardly wait for the film to end. But as strange as it sounds, it is worth seeing at least once.
[V4.5-A4.5] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box.


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