The Wolf Of Wall Street

Bottom Line: This movie did not have to be 3 hours long. 

There are a lot of good things about this movie. I am not surprised that it was so critically acclaimed and that it was nominated for so many awards. I am also not surprised that it didn't win a single Oscar. 

The Wolf of Wall Street is the true story based off the memoirs of Jordan Belfort (played by Leonardo DiCaprio).

From the get go, this movie is just off the wall on how ridiculous the lives of these New York Stock brokers are. 

They're throwing little people with velcro onto a target. They're doing a crap load of drugs. They're

banging a lot of hookers. They're just going Kookoo bananas on the entire world and at the center of it is Jordan Belfort.

Although that's not how he started. He started as a mild mannered college graduate who decided to join the leagues of stockbrokers right at the time it was horrible to be a stockbroker with the crash of 87.

Down on his luck, he starts working for a penny stock company and takes everything he knows about selling stocks and begins making very good money. From there he gathers together a gang of low lives like Jonah Hill as Donnie Azoff, and basically begins a criminal organization under the guise of his own stock broker firm.

What follows is a very drawn out story of Belfort making "a fuck load" of money, marrying Margot Robbie because...

My god...

Doing a crap load of cocaine and other illegal drugs, all the while stealing money from people's pockets in pressure induced brokerage. And you may ask yourself. 

Now you may ask yourself, this sounds like a great rags to riches to rags story and the fact of the matter is, it is. The thing that I like about DiCaprio is that he has now played two people who scammed the government and people out of a lot of money and after their prison time, they are now public speakers. He did with Catch Me If You Can, a movie I absolutely love. And now this movie, which I only kind of like. 

The main goal of this film is to get some kind of empathetic reaction out of the audience for this

slimy salesman who knows exactly what he's doing, exactly how he's hurting people, and what he's doing is wrong, and could give less of a shit as long as the money is still coming in.

There's the story of the entrepreneur, willing to push people out of the way to get rich and his pride is ultimately his downfall. And while that story is in this movie, there is also this story of the animalistic nature of these people that if the rules are thrown out the window, what is the result.

And the result that Martin Scorsese and the writer's of this movie would say is... well... this...

And this is the most appropriate shot I can give. It just gets absolutely ridiculous.

The problem is, it goes so ridiculous for 3 HOURS!!!

I basically watched a Lord of the Rings film today and it was called The Wolf of Wall Street. And this isn't the case where I just didn't want to sit through a 3 hour long movie, there are just scenes in this movie that go on and on and on. Did I really need to see the movie turn into a disaster film when his yacht is sinking? No. Did I need to see the part where he thinks his aunt in law is hitting on him? No. And I have to say there were one too many scenes of him just partying, doing cocaine and hookers. We get it, this guy and his entire company were nuts. 

The redeeming qualities of this movie was of course the performances of Leonardo DiCaprio and

Jonah Hill. The comedic timing of these two plus the rest of the cast made the movie incredibly entertaining and fast paced at times. And of course there's an irony to this all that they deliver perfectly.

DiCaprio himself, yells a lot. I wasn't totally sure why sometimes he would just leave the narration of the story to a background voice over and sometimes he would directly present to the camera. It had an air of Frank Underwood to it which is good, it was just inconsistent.

The character of Jordan Belfort is supposed to be flawed. You're suppose to see a deterioration of his morals. In actuality, you see him mild mannered one scene and then going to strip clubs and doing his slimy stockbroker ways next scene. It was not a subtle change.

All that being said, DiCaprio continues to be a powerful actor. I'm not surprised he didn't win an Oscar, especially in the year that the movie was nominated, especially in a year like 2013. But that's not to say its not a really good performance.

What's better is the relationship between him and Jonah Hill. While they both are scum of the earth

and you're not totally sure why you are rooting for them throughout the film, there is a great relationship there and while Belfort says there are no friends on Wallstreet, these two definitely are in the film.

On top of that, Hill is just nuts in this film. I'm not totally sure if he did a better performance than Jared Leto in Dallas Buyers Club (I still have to get around to it), but the nomination was well deserved.

The other characters in the stock broker world are hilarious. The best part about them is the humble, low life beginnings they come from. He gathers a bunch of weed dealers and turns them into incredible salesmen.

Bottom line is, the performances are not the problem of this film. Not at all.

And then there's Margo Robbie.

Now I'm not going to over blow this and say that Margot Robbie is the greatest thing since sliced bread because of her performance in this film. She's not. She's good. But she's not the best part of the movie. I mean she's the best part aesthetically speaking... I mean she's freaking gorgeous. 

But she's not in the movie enough for me to say that she blew my mind. She didn't. Unfortunately, the thing that she's best known for in this film is how gorgeous she is and how great she looks naked. 

HOWEVER. Its her last scene in the movie that makes me believe she has potential. 

The last scene is her essentially (spoilers?) telling Belfort she wants a divorce and her responding to

Not a picture from that scene but you know what I mean

him losing his shit.

Its done very, very well.

Its not Oscar worthy, its not even mind blowingly good. Its just good. It gives me assurances that Margot Robbie is not just a pretty face, but she actually has some talent.

And now I get it. I get it why people had no criticisms over Robbie being cast as Harley Quinn. I don't have that much attachment to the character of Harley Quinn, but with what I saw here, I have no doubt that she could rock the role and suddenly, I'm ten times more excited about seeing that interpretation of the character in Suicide Squad.

But I'm not here to talk about comic book movies right now.

The fact of the matter is. The Wolf of Wall Street is a good movie. Cut out an hour of this film, and it could have been a great film.

Hopefully people understand that this movie is not glorifying the behavior of men like Belfort.

Its not saying that you should go out and do illegal things on the stock market.

If anything, its saying that there's a problem with the world of the stock market and things need to be changed. And if that's the point... well they could have done a little bit better job showing the problems with the low sentencing that comes with those crimes. Hell I think Get Hard did a better job pointing out the problems with stock brokers taking advantage of people than this movie did.

Maybe that's the point of the film, maybe its not. That's up to your interpretation of the film and that's the great thing about film.

I did like The Wolf Of Wall Street, just not as much as I think I was suppose to.

But what did you think? Comment and Discuss below! Also follow me on Twitter @cmhaugen24 to send me your thoughts on films and give suggestions for future reviews. You can also follow me to get updates on movie news and reviews.

I'll leave you with this. Its the honest trailer. What were you expecting? Enjoy!