Monday, December 23, 2013

Martin Scorsese’s ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ Review Roundup

Martin Scorsese’s ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ was long awaited. What would the legendary ‘Goodfellas’ and ‘Casino’ director and its star, Leonardo DiCaprio, bring to the high stakes world of finance? Find out what critics have to say about the his latest opus.




The movie is based on memoir of the same title by Jordan Belfort a former stock trader who spent time in prison for his part in securities fraud. It was adapted for the screen by Terence Winter (‘Boardwalk Empire’). With a running time of three hours and a black comedy slant ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ seems on the outset to promise a total immersion into the monied landscape that is exotic and enticing even as it is derided as one of greed and corruption.

Leonardo DiCaprio portrays the titular ‘Wolf’, Jordan Belfort in all of his documented and self-confessed excesses of materialism and drug abuse fueled by his elaborate stock swindles that had made him a multi-milionaire by his mid 20s. It marks his fifth movie with Scorsese and easily their most notable collaboration since ‘The Departed’ of 2006.

The movie has a large supporting cast that includes Jonah Hill, Matthew McConaughey, Jean Dujardin, Margot Robbie, Jon Favreau, Kyle Chandler, Rob Reiner and others.

The highly Oscar-buzzed ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ has received two Golden Globe nominations and it has also garnered numerous award nominations from a variety of critics associations, including National Board of Review, Boston Society of Film Critics, and San Francisco Film Critics Circle among others.

The critics are giving the movie rave reviews nearly universally. Here’s a roundup.

“….This $100 million extravaganza is—let’s face it—rampantly over the top. Hell, it’s by Martin Scorsese, who is always over the top. But unlike the Coen brothers, who have been getting away with murder for years, he puts thrilling stuff on the screen that is unforgettable….” — New York Observer

“….Look closely and you might see your own venal fantasies in how these Wall Street scumbags spend their ill-gotten gains on drugs, hookers, cars, yachts and jets. Working with a gutsy script by The Sopranos’ Terence Winter, Scorsese is jabbing hard at America’s jackpot culture. The laughs are merciless and nonstop, every one with a sting in its tail….” — Rolling Stone

“….Now, Belfort’s riches-to-slightly-less-riches tale has been brought to the screen by no less a connoisseur of charismatic sociopaths than Martin Scorsese, and the result is a big, unruly bacchanal of a movie that huffs and puffs and nearly blows its own house down, but holds together by sheer virtue of its furious filmmaking energy and a Leonardo DiCaprio star turn so electric it could wake the dead….” — Variety

“….Leonardo DiCaprio puts his voice, his body, and his handsome face, which he contorts into a grimace, into what is certainly his largest performance yet. But the entire movie feels manic and forced, as though Scorsese is straining to make the craziest, most over-the-top picture ever—as if he is determined, at seventy-one, to outdo his earlier triumphs, “Raging Bull” and “GoodFellas,” and to show that he’s still the king. Put crudely, this is his attempt to out-Tarantino Tarantino….” — The New Yorker

“….Great filmmakers don’t grow old like the rest of us, and at 71, Martin Scorsese has stormed back with a picture that would have exhausted a director half his age. The Wolf of Wall Street, his 23rd feature, is as hot and wet as freshly butchered meat: every second, every frame of its three-hour running time is virile with a lifetime’s accumulated genius….” — The Telegraph

“….Nearly as extravagant as the characters it depicts, Martin Scorsese’s comic, operatically-scaled film is, on a moment-by-moment basis, often madly entertaining due to its live-wire energy, exuberant performances and the irresistible appeal of watching naughty boys doing very naughty things….” — The Hollywood Reporter

“…. The Wolf of Wall Street, praise be, is the director’s most exuberant and exciting picture in years – certainly since The Departed, possibly since Casino. Here is a white-collar crime caper that stirs golden memories of the Scorsese back catalogue, often quite knowingly and sometimes to a fault….” — The Guardian

‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ opens in theaters on December 25th as quite a Christmas present for moviegoers. See the official trailer below.







Pictures: PR Photos

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