The Wolf of Wall Street - Film Review

In an interview, film star Michael Douglas mentioned a number of the bankers responsible for the economic crisis took his character Gordon Gekko as an inspiration for their day-to-day work.

This is a curious effect of this film. While most of the audience of the film will have seen it as it was intended by the initial auteurs - as a satirical condemnation of 1980s money-worship culture - it ended up being celebrated by those in the industry being condemned, meaning that its possible that Douglas and Charlie Sheen, by accident, created the mindset behind the 2007 financial industry collapse that has ruined the world economy for generations.

Many decades on and another film starring one of the leading lights of Hollywood is being accused of glamorising the reckless excess of Wall Street bankers again, albeit among other things.

The Wolf of Wall Street is based upon the literary works of Jordan Belfort, who was one of the biggest financial conmen in 1990s America. His firm Stratton Oakmont dabbled in cheap, over-the-counter stock that was essentially worthless, along with dabbling in securities fraud and financial corruption.

In some ways, Leonardo diCaprio hasn't really had to change too much from his last film role - the title role of The Great Gatsby. He's still throwing decadent parties, flashing cash like its going out of fashion and attracting attention of clientele beyond his social circle.

But its highly unlikely Gatsby made his money through these sort of mannerisms, or spent it in such an outlandish way.

If the financial jargon behind his accumulated wealth means nothing to those not from a Wall Street or City of London background, there's plenty of bizarre but spectacular monuments to excess here for your entertainment. This is the possibly one of the wildest film rides possible, given its a veritable smorgasbord of crashed yachts, sports cars and helicopters, sex, alcohol, a wide variety of drugs, sellotaping money to prostitutes, $26,000 lunches, bins full of discarded $100 notes, naked marching bands, skating chimpanzees and even dwarf-throwing competitions in just an ordinary week for Belfort.

It almost feels like watching this movie is getting you high, and it worryingly makes being an amoral financial shark look a lot of fun, which is probably why Goldman Sachs bankers cheered Belfort's descent into debauchery.

Its also probably why there's been a debate about the movie's lack of moral compass. In America, this film has largely attracted a conservative viewership, who are not exactly the ones that are going to be impressed by the perception of Wall Street traders snorting coke off prostitute's arses, for one example. This excess - not to mention a record use of the word "fuck" for a non-documentary film - also probably explains the 45 minute cut and dialogue bleeping in Dubai showings, or the outright ban it received in others Muslim countries.

The first part of the film is basically a dip in this world where a moral compass is irrelevant to proceedings. Hell, the first 10 minutes sees us meet him at the height of his bastard powers. His team embark in dwarf throwing as end-of-day entertainment, he has a glamourous wife that performs sex acts on him while he drives a lurid white Ferrari, makes $49M a year and owns a huge estate on Long Island.

The film then backs up a bit to the beginning of proceedings, where he arrives in New York a wide-eyed optimistic 22-year-old with dreams of wealth. Having impressed his boss, his new head Mark Hanna (Matthew McConaughey) takes him out to lunch where he says the secret to Wall Street success is constant drugs and sex. Not that it does his boss any good - Belfort's is barely weeks into the job when the firm is hit by Black Monday, where the Dow Jones suffers its biggest fall since the 1929 stock market crash and stockbrokers are laid off by the bucketload.

Broke and lost, Belfort is encouraged towards a job at a small financial firm by his first wife Teresa (Cristin Milloti). This firm turns out to be selling penny stocks, and Belfort's Wall Street aggression leads him to earning a fortune.

He befriends furniture salesman Donnie Azoff (Jonah Hill), and together they decide to break away and form their own company using Azoff's pot-dealing mates. Before long, the firm becomes massively successful using Belfort's brand of mass selling to pressure investors into parting with their cash.

Before long, Stratton Oakmont has an enormous office. Belfort and his associates become addicted to a wide variety of drugs, including cocaine and Quaaludes, and holding increasingly-debauched parties in both their offices and their personal lives. A staff getaway by the beach turns into an orgy of excess, and eventually leads to Belfort meeting his future second bridge Naomi (Margot Robbie).

They quickly move into a life of marriage together - after a predictably over-the-top bachelor weekend - and before long have a kid together. Even despite his continual cavorting with a barrel-load of hookers.

This film is not for the faint-hearted. There are so many naked women that before long seeing one with clothes is a novelty, while the film contains so many graphic and absurdly frequent depictions of drug abuse. The best moments come later on, such as a riotous show of drug-fuelled insanity on a flight to Switzerland and a sequence where Belfort and Azoff take expired but pungent Quaaludes, which leads to sensational high acting that is borderline offensive.

Despite this fun, the quick rise and nature of Stratton has led to government attention, not least from a Forbes magazine article that dubbed Belfort "a twisted Robin Hood-like figure". The Securities and Exchange Commission, and the FBI are both conducting investigations. Belfort doesn't help by trying to wine-and-dine lead FBI agent Patrick Denham (Kyle Chandler) on his private yacht, which leads to him content to throw hundreds of dollars at him and his associate as they walk off.

Even with investigations, the Stratton fun continues, and they lead the IPO of shoe maker Steve Madden. This leads to Belfort pocketing $22million personally, which he opts to hide in a Swiss bank account under the name of his wife's English aunt Emma (Joanna Lumley).

Lumley is but one of the absurd wealth of actors that pop in-and-out of the main storyline. Rob Reiner is delightful as Belfort's dad, while Jean Dujardin is impressive as Belfort's corrupt Swiss banking associate, and the legion of men following Belfort's lead are all exceptionally committed to bulking up the cast and ploy of a firm that had, at its real-life height, over 1,000 stockbrokers.

Yet knowledge of such a stellar cast-list, not to mention his own outstanding performance, can save Belfort from the scope of the authorities. He is arrested for crashing his car while high, although is able to evade charges on a technicality and - somehow - escapes death, so decides to go on a yacthing holiday with Azoff and their wives to Italy.

This, however, is where things begin to turn to shit for Belfort, with the death of Emma leaving him on a mad dash to try and get the money out of his Swiss bank account, only for the boat to capsize and the plane to explode.

From here is a tonal change, as Belfort becomes more detestable and more desperate, as the FBI slowly hunts the wolf down. Eventually, he cracks, ripping open his sofa to grab at a stash of coke after 2 years sober and engaging in awful and pointless domestic violence. This sequence is certainly very uncompromising, and reveals the point where the humour stops.

But the most surprising thing about the end sequence is not the betrayal of his employees, the piss-easy jail term or the fact he still managed to abscond with the bulk of the cash. Its that he is now, in the final scene, using the selling techniques he used to build Stratton Oakmont to teach the wannabee financial sellers of tomorrow.

This is the biggest satirical point of the movie. It highlights the fact men who made fortunes from such a diabolically evil philosophy are now using these techniques to create the financial personalities of tomorrow, and with it, breed new destructive and amoral bastards for a business that is hardly short of them to begin with.

Its impressive to see a film cover such bases throughout its time span, which in a way justifies such a mammoth running time. It revels in the excess of the financial riches Belfort swindles his way towards, depicts the hunt where the bad guy becomes unstuck, and has a point to make about the ruthless worship of cash. But most of all, its funny.

Its impressive just how consistently amusing the film is throughout its process, and it has a fair number of impressively absurd set-pieces that deliver some massively hilarious pay-offs.

If you want a film that subtly explains how it came to be that the financial world became a culture for amoral bastards that were able to destroy the world economy and (largely) get away with it, this is not for you. But if you want a fun ride through this financial culture filled with moments of hilarity and almost constant excess, step right up.

4/5