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Saturday, January 18, 2014

Wolf of Wall Street Review: Fire it up! Fire it up!

Hilarious movie.  This movie can only be described as a comedy.  It's a comedy of excess.  But it's also written as a tragedy.  We follow the life, success, and eventual downfall of Wall Street stock broker Jordan Belfort played by Leo DiCaprio. 

From the beginning we see this world as being a little off.  We see these people with far more money than they know what to do with, and instead of being the "high society" types most professional people like this are portrayed as, instead they are sophomoric, crude, and generally unpleasant.  But man do they have a good time.  There's sex and drugs everywhere you look.  And they revel in it. 

The story almost becomes secondary to the debauchery.  But the story is specifically about Jordan.  His less than humble beginnings, to the far more humble beginnings, to becoming a weird mix of Gordon Gekko and Larry Flynt.  So what does a shady salesman do when he is broke, he skirts the law and makes huge amounts of money.  And there's your conflict.  The FBI and the SCC are out to get him and in the meantime he's doing enough drugs to kill a small city.  Like I said, the hilarity of excess.

And yes there are some really hilarious moments in this movie.  Most of them have to do with DiCaprio stoned off his butt, but still they were really funny. 

The sex scenes in this movie on the other hand I think went too far at times.  I mean it got clinical.  I think if they added another sex scene or another scene of Jonah Hill jerking off, this could've also qualified as porn.  So, allow the youngsters to view at your own risk.  LOTS of sex.  Full frontal.  LOTS!

While on Jordan's journey from titan of Wall Street, we also see him go from that financial titan to Tony Robbins, to one scene he acted like Tiger Woods.  I won't spoil any more but yeah, worth seeing.

Honestly, I had a great time watching.  It's a long movie.  It's 3 hours and there was that one fake out ending that led into the 3rd act,  but a marvelous job by a star studded cast and one of the greatest directors alive today, Martin Scorsese.