The Wolf of Wall Street

The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) is adapted from Jordan Belfort's own memoir, and Belfort is real: a stockbroker who defrauded small investors in the nineties, went to prison, and then wrote a book about it. The film follows his rise. He starts selling penny stocks, builds his own firm, the money begins to flow, and for three hours we watch parties, drugs and impunity. Scorsese's most criticised decision is not showing the victims. We almost never see the people being defrauded; they exist as voices on a phone. He did that deliberately, and his defence is that Belfort never thought about them and the film is told from inside his head. The opposing view also has a case; many viewers watched it as an advertisement rather than a warning. The set stories are well known. Matthew McConaughey humming and thumping his chest in the restaurant scene is not in the script; it was the actor's own pre-scene ritual, and DiCaprio saw it and asked for it to stay in. The real Jordan Belfort appears briefly at the end, playing the man who introduces DiCaprio on stage. It runs three hours and is among the films on record for its volume of swearing. It runs 180 minutes. Good for: Scorsese, dark comedy, and true crime. Less good for: the drugs, nudity and sex are relentless. It is long and offers no moral conclusion.