By Chad Rhym – Copy Editor
The Wolf of Wall Street, directed by Martin Scorcese is the story of Jordan Belfort’s (Leonardo Dicaprio) rise to fame in the world of stockbroking on Wall Street. In the film, Dicaprio uses immoral and criminal tactics to reach Wall Street stardom.
The film begins in 1987 with an indigent American-dream driven Belfort coming straight out of business school with the hopes and dreams of becoming a Wall Street stockbroker. After some job searching, the merchant and investment banking firm L.F. Rothschild ends up offering Belfort a job. During a lunch hour, Belfort’s quirky boss, Mark Hanna (Matthew McConaughey) takes him out to eat. There, Hanna gives Belfort his keys to making it in the league: drugs, sex and lies.
The beef of the film is just that: drugs, sex, lies and a few FBI investigations led by Agent Patrick Denham (Kyle Chandler). Although the lavish party scenes got a little repetitive, Scorsese does a beautiful job of providing “did that just really happen?” moments, and keeping the viewer married to the screen for a three hour roller coaster.
Alongside a hilarious screenplay, to top it all off, Dicaprio’s slick, in-your-face and brilliant performance won him an Golden Globe award for best actor in a Musical or Comedy. Supporting actors Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie and Rob Reiner also all gave brilliant and hysterical performances.
During those three hours Dicaprio and company made being a stockbroker look like one huge bachelor/bachelorette party. Who would’ve ever guessed the purchasing of an excessive amount of cocaine, the hiring of hundreds of prostitutes and the sailing of his own multi-million dollar yacht through a vicious storm was all real events not from a fictional comic book supervillain, but a stockbroker.
The Wolf of Wall Street sneakily glorifies corruption, should’ve been NC-17 and managed to break a cinematic record of 500 plus dropped f-bombs. Nevermind the aroma of muck and guilt in the air of the theater after the movie ends, the movie is still a good time. It’s a great and crucial development in the acclaimed series of “don’t see this with your mom” films. Seriously don’t.
