Skip to footer

'The Wolf of Wall Street' never gets inside the head of its protagonist

( R ) ( Monitor Movie Guide )

'Wolf' stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill.

|
Mary Cybulski/Paramount Pictures/AP
'The Wolf of Wall Street' stars Jonah Hill (l.) and Leonardo DiCaprio (r.).
  • By Peter Rainer Film critic

Watching Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street,” starring Leonardo DiCaprio, I felt like I was trapped inside a dryer spin cycle of the director’s collected hits, especially “Goodfellas” and “Casino.” Do we really need another movie about a Wall Street shark living high and scraping bottom? 

The film is almost three hours long and precious little of it feels new – not from Scorsese or from anybody else. DiCaprio’s Jordan Belfort, upon whose memoir this film, written by Terence Winter, is loosely based, goes from two-bit broker on Long Island to major player, earning $49 million by the time he was twenty-six, mostly from bogus blue chip stock sales. Scads of that money went up his nose or into a daisy chain of orgiastic extravaganzas – many of which we are subjected to ad nauseam.

DiCaprio doesn’t seem terribly comfortable in the role despite all his strutting and posturing. Maybe it’s because the film never allows him to get inside Belfort’s psyche. It’s essentially a celebration of sharkdom. (The victims of Belfort’s chicanery are barely dealt with.) Jonah Hill plays Belfort’s cohort and punching bag Donnie Azoff and the actor sports his whitest teeth ever. Too bad there isn’t enough here for him to sink his teeth into. Grade: C (Rated R for sequences of strong sexual content, graphic nudity, drug use and language throughout, and for some violence.)

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to 'The Wolf of Wall Street' never gets inside the head of its protagonist
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Movies/2013/1225/The-Wolf-of-Wall-Street-never-gets-inside-the-head-of-its-protagonist
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe