The Wolf of Wall Street is the Marmite of movies - you're either going to love it or hate it and there's probably no convincing you either way once you've made a decision. Panned by most of the people I know, I avoided it at the theater and then finally streamed the film when I had a whole three hours available - and it was once of the best three hours I've had with a film in a long time.
The very beginning sets the tone: it's loud, vulgar and excessive. It's the Scorsese we know from Goodfellas and watching him bring truly unlikeable characters to life is one of his trademark directorial maneuvers. There are F-bombs galore, drugs, endless tracking shots, freeze frames, voiceovers, the mandatory great soundtrack and a feeling at the end of the film that we truly know the characters. It's his familiar story of a prideful, egotistical anti-hero slipping into an illegal world to live an indulgent life that ultimately becomes his undoing and here he executes spectacularly well.
DiCaprio and HIll deliver some of their finest performances as the Quaalude-popping miscreants serving up darkly funny performances that balance the excess of this parallel world. You'll hate Wall Street all the more after viewing but it's hard to not to become enticed by their antics of running a financial frat house representing so many of the things that have gone wrong in their real life counterparts.
There's no doubt this is a polarizing film and not one you'd want to watch with your in laws but as a slice of life where the volume is permanently set to 11, it's mesmerizing, funny, tragic and genuinely some of the year's best entertainment.
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