THE WOLF OF WALL STREET

Martin Scorsese’s take on a big time financial crook who swindled money out of a legion of small time people to finance his life of excess and debauchery is a piece of faction.  Based on the real life of convicted stockbroker Jordan Belfort whose Firm fraudulently sold billions of worthless penny shares, it does however use Belfort’s own memoirs as source of information, so its very questionable to how much of it is actually true.

Belfort was born in the Bronx, and brought up in Queens by his Jewish middle class parents who were both accountants.  His first job on Wall Street was as a runner but when he passed his exams and qualified to be a Broker the Market crashed on his first day trading and he lost his job.  Virtually unemployable he ended up in crummy office in a Strip Mall in Long Island where some itinerant salesmen were trading with Penny Stocks and making a meager living from it. Belfort quickly caught on to the untapped potential of selling these shares and he racked it up more than a notch of two and started making really good easy money.

This was just the start of an extraordinary tale of unbridled greed that spurred Belfort to bigger and wilder illegal schemes that would rake in countless wealth for him and his sidekicks.  He would quickly trade his first Office in a disused garage for the most flashiest trading floor in a skyscraper on Wall Street in the same cavalier manner that he also would replace his childhood sweetheart bride for a racier sexier young one.

With seemingly limitless monies pouring in, Belfort indulges in a hard-partying lifestyle with excessive amounts of pills, women, cars and other toys that it allows him to buy, and they in turn drive his obsession to keep making even more money regardless of its legitimacy or morality.

Scorcese portrays this all like a depraved manic circus-like orgy that is so ridiculously wild and salacious that it seems like it couldn’t possibly have happened.  It’s not just the fact that Belfort is such a repugnant character but the way that he draws in his cohorts to ape his obscene behaviour too.  It is a sight to behold, and one that stuns you into complete silence as it is so repugnant.

In the movie Belfort, in a superb Award winning performance by Leonard DiCaprio, is a charismatic handsome charmer that we are meant to admire.  And even when the FBI catch up with him and have him in a tight corner facing ruin and a potentially long prison sentence, he acts like an honorable man he is reluctant to snitch on his friends to save is own neck.  Whereas in real life he co-operated with the Authorities with hardly any hesitation at all.

As a piece of pure entertainment, Scorsese has provided a jam-packed three hours of exhilarating and extravagant story telling that leaves one quite exhausted.  As for the reality, it glamorises a really nasty self-indulgent crook who robbed thousands of very ordinary people of their life savings and more. Even years later after Belfort has served a short prison sentence he has moved to Australia so that he can keep all the proceeds from his two books, this movie and his inspirational speaking gigs and thus avoid paying back any of the Restitution to the Victims as ordered by the U.S. Courts.

Available on Amazon

★★★★★★★