Saw this tonight, and though it was way longer than it needed to be – three hours? puh-leeze – there were so many individually great scenes that I can see why Scorsese was so self-indulgent with the editing.
The scene where Jordan is making the phone call at the country club – good lord, I was laughing so hard I was snorting. I don’t think of either Scorsese or DiCaprio being comedy greats, so part of it was just how unexpected it was.
Lots of nice turns in small parts.
Overall, quite entertaining, and the three hours fly by, but hell, it really, really, really should have had a half hour or so chopped out of it.
I had to see this movie, having heard about a woman who chewed Scorsese out regarding its depravity, and while it was certainly a very hard R (I was especially surprised by the scene of a dominatrix shoving a candle into DiCaprio’s ass), I’ve seen way more disturbing films.
Like Twickster, I found the three hour running time to be a bit much, but it still kept my interest the whole time, and it was a lot funnier than I was expecting. The quaalude/country club scene was a definite stand out, but I also thought a lot of Jonah Hill stuff was hysterical. I loved the part at the beginning where he explains his incestuous marriage to an increasingly creeped out DiCaprio.
The funniest Scorcese movie ever. But all-in-all, you’re just watching Leo DiCaprio party for 3 hours - not a lot there.
If he meant it as a cautionary tale, then he failed. If he meant it to shock people about the excesses of Wall Street, then he failed. If he wanted to make a bunch of kids want to be working in the financial markets… then he succeeded.
I thought the same thing. Except for McConaughey’s introduction to trading at the beginning, there’s no addressing of the fact that what these guys are doing is stealing from people. The excesses are portrayed as excesses, but come off as fun indulgences. There’s an undercurrent of “gosh, if he hadn’t been a drug addict, if he’d stayed faithful to his wife, it would all have been OK.”
In this way, it’s not much different than stories about the mob – This one is very similar to Goodfellas in many ways.
Scorcese has a good sense of what makes an entertaining movie, and I’m sure that on some level he wants to make a cautionary tale. But in the end, you need to make the victims much more than a disembodied voice on the other end of a couple of early phone calls…
That’s because we are all the victims, and at the same time unindicted co-conspirators.
Jordan Belfort cannot exist unless we supply him with the greed that enables him. We lived through this and instead of lighting up Congress and demanding real reform thought quietly, perhaps a little embarrassed, but in our heart-of-hearts, maybe next time I can score like that. We didn’t and had a melt down.
I got the feeling the movie was a scam, i.e. something Belfort was trying to sell to you. The movie was the pen at the end of the movie; something you don’t need that you get tricked into wanting. I loved it. It was excessive and glorious.
Also, does anyone know how the FBI got the yellow sheet of paper that said “Don’t incriminate yourself, I’m wearing a wire”? Was Jonah Hill’s character supposed to have flipped and ratted him out? Because he doesn’t get busted at the end. I don’t think that’s what happened, but I think of any other way the FBI would have gotten their hands on that paper.
Three hours of asking “what’s the point going to be?”
Scorsese can do individual scenes but they added up to nothing. We’ve seen Wall Street greed repeatedly. What did this add? The only thing that worked were the motivational speeches which, unlike the motivational speeches in almost all movies, made me think that real human beings would respond to them.
Seeing this right after American Hustle was destructive to the movie. Same time period, same hustle. But American Hustle was all about the characters and WoWS had no characters, just cliches. And not one single decent part for a woman. Not one.
I did like DiCaprio’s performance and could only think that if he had played Gatsby with a little of that hustle the film might have come close to working.
Maybe they should call it The Waste of Wall Street.
I saw it. Very remenicent of Goodfellas. But it wasn’t goodfellas.
I actually blame the editing. At times, between cuts, it was very choppy. Like you knew they’d taken a chunk out, which is surprising because I can’t imagine much being left on the cutting room floor of this three hour movie. Again, editing. The one person who should have stood up to Scorcese and said “this is way too long and the point is getting lost. What’s the story here?”
I really enjoyed it. But I feel I’d have enjoyed a slightly different, 2.5 hour movie a lot more.
That bothered me as well. I remember seeing Donnie Azoff holding his head in his office, watching the FBI come in and arrest all of the other brokers in the office while he was undisturbed. I was wondering why that napkin wasn’t explored further.
Another thing, is anyone else bothered by the scene at the country club where Jordan is trying to get down the outside stairs? In the scene where he is looking down the stairs there’s only about 5 steps. In the long shot, there are about 10 steps in all. What gives?
In reality, there were 5 steps. In his mind, however, there were a lot of steps. The differing number of stairs showed a shift in perspective, from dispassioned observer to “in the mind of Jordan”. If I recall correctly, the shots that had a lot of steps were always Jordan POV shots.
We see this just a bit later, when he puts the car in gear, it starts going in reverse, then the scene cuts and we look at the car driving away, in forward. (They eventually show that the car didn’t arrive unscathed.)
Yes. I’ve met Belfort and Porush, and plenty of people who worked for them at Stratton Oakmont. They were, everyone one of them, unrepentant thieves who would happily steal their own mothers’ social security checks knowing that their moms would then starve to death. They stole on a massive scale. They would steal anything they could get their hands on. They would cheat anyone. They would cheat each other. Really, they were garbage who got off easy.
I don’t believe in the death penalty. But the world would have been a better place if they’d never been born.
Yeah, it’s pretty clear that Donnie ratted Jordan out.
Agreed. I did like the scene at the end when after everything the FBI agent was riding the Subway sweating his balls all while Belfort get’s a 36 month [del]vacation[/del] in a minimum security [del]country club[/del] and then goes one to travel the world making seven figures. And that’s the American way!
By the way, I looked up The Equalizer on IMDB. Apparently Steve Buscemi was in it for a single episode in 1987. So the timelines match up, and I assume Scorcese put him in for shits and giggles.
