We see the look on DiCaprio's face.
He sits in the chair, and stares blankly, but knowingly. He knows what he has to do. He knows what he has to say. And he knows it's not going to be pleasant. The camera stays on his face. His eyes glassed over with anger and fear. Finally, after much silence, he speaks:
"So what do I do?"
To which Martin Sheen replies:
"Become a cop again."
Of course, I'm referring to that fantastic scene in Martin Scorsese's The Departed where DiCaprio must go undercover to bring down Jack Nicholson's crime lord Frank Costello. That's an example of a master director at work.
Ever since I saw GoodFellas in the year 1990, and for 23 years, going back in time and watching Scorsese's older classics like Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Mean Streets, and the forgotten The King of Comedy, I've been saying that ol' Marty has never made a bad movie. Never. Every piece of film that I have seen him make has been grandiose entertainment, even if they're Hitchcockian rip-offs like Cape Fear or Shutter Island. Scorsese is a master of cinematic filmmaking. The Departed was on-par with GoodFellas and he deserved every piece of gold that Best Directot Oscar offered when he won it for the first time in 2007.
Now that I've gotten all of that out of the way, let me go ahead and say this:
The Wolf Of Wall Street is a horrible movie.
Yes. That's right. I'll say it again. The Wolf Of Wall Street is a horrible movie.
It's with great sadness, and much disappointment, that I must divulge to you, the reader, that Martin Scorsese has finally made a movie worthy of crumpling up and throwing in the trash. It's that bad. It's that ridiculous. It's that cringe-inducing. It's the story of crazy stockbrokers and their incredibly idiotic ringleader, and they all yell and scream and take drugs! YEAH!!
The screenwriter for the film is Terence Winter, who wrote and produced several episodes of one of my favorite TV shows, The Sopranos, which is a series that started and ended perfectly (despite what anybody says), and is an example of perfect character development and storytelling.
I understand that this movie is based on a book, and that according to Jordan Belfort, the person who is the main character in the book and in the movie, 90% of what is onscreen is what actually happened. But you know what? WHO CARES??
I don't get it. This movie is 2 hours and 59 minutes long. And after 20 minutes of watching it, I thought: "Boy, these characters are complete idiots and I don't care about any of 'em." And then I realized that....
....there were 2 hours and 39 minutes left.
How could I feel this way after watching 20 minutes of a Scorsese picture?
The whole film feels like watching a drunken, drug-induced, coked-up college frat party for 3 hours. Now I admit, I was the shy one in college, and never was into that whole scene, so maybe I'm just as clueless as a Kardashian, but still....who would want to watch this for THREE. SOLID. HOURS?
 |
| Ha-ha-ha-hahaha! You'll never get that 3 hours back, you stupid fool! |
Look, I'm all for craziness and tomfoolery in a film. When you think about it, GoodFellas portrayed one of the most insane characters ever put on a movie screen: Joe Pesci's Tommy DiVito. And the whole "You think I'm funny?" scene was (dare I say it) ridiculous, but....it fit in with the movie! That was his character.
In Wolf, it's like Scorsese put his entire cast in a room with mounds of cocaine, told 'em to snort as much as they could, and then just have them run around in front of the camera. And yeah, maybe that was the whole point of the movie....to see one man's uprising and descent, particularly in a place of extreme power, but I've seen more entertainment at the bottom of Jabba The Hutt's rancor pit.
Leonardo DiCaprio has proven since forever that he's made a long acting trek since his days on "Growing Pains", and while his performances are sometimes hit-and-miss, he is a great artist. However, in this cinematic dreck, he's really given nothing to do but run around and act like an entitled spoiled brat who just escaped from the nearby Gwyneth Paltrow cloning farm. (Wahhh! Where's my money so I can get another pizza oven for my garden?)
Plus, I have never understood the appeal of Jonah Hill. Where did this guy come from? He had a small role in The 40-Year-Old Virgin and then all of sudden he's everywhere and being praised by people as this hilarious guy channeling some sort of John Candy vibe. Regardless, I've never found him to be funny, and he's anything but in this movie as DiCaprio's "bumbling" whatever-the-hell-he's-supposed-to-be. (Really? An Oscar nomination?)
It's all just so baffling. Maybe I was in a bad mood when I watched this movie. (I sure was after it was over). Maybe I'm just getting old and not appreciating films the way I used to, or maybe Martin Scorsese just decided to take a Ferris Bueller and have a day off.
With all this said, let me just mention the film's ONE redeeming quality: Rob Reiner. Reiner plays DiCaprio's dad, and he's absolutely hilarious. However, his performance did give me some false hope that, "Heyyy, wait a second....maybe this movie is going to get better."
Nope. It didn't.
Because at that point, I felt like I had lost two poorly constructed houses and had to go into hiding in a mansion made of bricks, huffing and puffing until I finally calmed down.
The Wolf Of Wall Street (2013)
Directed by Martin Scorsese
179 minutes (WTF?)
Grade: F+
Edit: The theatrical poster states: "More is never enough."
Umm, yeah it is. It was too much, actually.
