Movie Review: The Wolf of Wall Street…is an entirely different animal

How much do you enjoy watching biopics? And am not necessarily talking about moralistic, inspirational stories like Chris Gardener (Pursuit of Happyness) and stuff – but just a large slice of a famous life with some of its rights and mostly its wrongs, intact. The answer to that question may well decide whether this particular animal is your type.

Its always easier to look up to a righteous human being – one who has believed in doing good and is driven by moral principles and ideas. The Wolf…however, is anything but and his immorality is not only shown but rather showcased in this story about his life. He is inspirational in his own way but you may not agree with his methods. There are subtle messages every now and then to be picked up but Scorsese isn’t here to tell you an Aesop fable.

What Scorsese does do is what he does best – present this slice of life with a long dialogue exchanges between central characters without letting it get boring, comic relief in the most unlikely of scenarios and displaying the frenzy and addled state of mind, when required, without covering anything up. Sure, it gets a little too much to handle, with some scenes blatantly disturbing – quite likely to get the shake of a head in disapproval – but Scorsese doesn’t want to hide any of it. I only share this to help you make up your mind, since at 179 minutes, The Wolf..ends up taking a rather large slice of ‘your’ life in the process

If the Wolf…works somewhat, its largely due to two factors – Scorsese’s direction and Leonardo Di Caprio’s Oscar worthy performance. Despite its faults in character, Leonardo throws himself whole heartedly into the role of Jordan Belfort and pulls off a rather complex character with great panache. His expression is just perfect especially in scenes where he could have been deadpan as well, but the way he puts it across, it brings new emotions to the fore and a different insight to his character – masterfully done. There are cases where he gets a little over the top too, but his character itself is such that over the top also seems to come naturally to him – so its hard to argue.

Despite this though, I wouldn’t put The Wolf…in the ‘must watch’ category simply due to its length and how obvious that becomes as the movie progresses. At 45 minutes shorter, The Wolf might well have been worth a howl, so unless you are a big fan of biopics you might want to be very sure before you go hunting for this particular animal