I'm not the kind of guy who hides his
eyes during nude scenes in movies. Despite the accent being on “guy,”
I don't watch a movie because it's reported to contain some nudity,
but I don't avert my eyes when it crops up either. Remember: guy!
Having said that; I lost three precious
hours of my life on Saturday night suffering through Martin
Scorsese's self-indulgent ode to Wall Street excess “The Wolf of
Wall Street.” If I did watch movies solely for the nudity, I would
have felt like I hit the six-number Powerball with “Wolf.”
Lots of nudity? You betcha! And some of
it was of the “full monty” variety.
Toss in the use of the F-bomb every 15
seconds or so and I was so numbed that by the beginning of hour
three, I hardly even noticed when a woman suddenly began prancing
around in her birthday suit.
Of course by hour three, I was fast
forwarding through huge swaths of the film.
Yes, the film is three – count them,
3 – hours long!
Apparently, Scorsese no longer feels
comfortable making a film without DiCaprio. Of the five films on
which they have collaborated, I actually like the first four: “Gangs
of New York,” “The Aviator,” “The Departed” and to a lesser
extent “Shutter Island.”
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| "Yes, you'll love it! You get to drop the F-bomb here, here, here, here and here...." |
“Wolf,” though, was a bridge too
far.
Here's the plot 4-1-1: Real-life trader
Jordan Belfort – played by DiCaprio – wants to be rich and gets
himself hired by a well-established Wall Street brokerage company as
some sort of boiler-room phone jockey. Mentored by a low-moral broker
– played by Matthew McConaughey in an over-the-top, caricature-like
performance – Belfort sets off on the road to drugs and fraud.
Belfort finds himself out of work when the brokerage closes and
eventually starts his own firm where drugs, sex and fraud are its
staples. Belfort and his buddies all get filthy rich, and ever
further out of control. Eventually Belfort is indicted, goes to
prison and winds up back where he began. Yawn.
Here's the highlight reel: dwarf
tossing, snorting coke off a woman's bosom, gay orgy, several
straight orgies and two car wrecks. Now that's entertainment!
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| DiCaprio as Belfort. |
Beyond McConaughey, other supporting
cast members of note include Jonah Hill, Rob Reiner and Jon Favreau.
The list of hotties decorating the screen includes never-heard-ofs
Margot Robbie and Katarina Cas, both of whom are drop-dead gorgeous,
and we see in their full glory at least once in the film. It was the
only thing making this film watchable. Remember: guy!
 |
| Margot Robbie. |
This would have been a much better
two-hour film or an even better 90-minute film. There are
excruciatingly long scenes of pure dialog that don't really advance
the plot, but do provide the DVD viewer with plenty of opportunity to
take a bathroom or snack-fetching break without pausing the movie.
After the third or fourth sex or
coke-sniffing scene, the audience probably grasped the
whole-decadence thing. Anything beyond was simply overkill. Another
half-dozen such scenes was a lot of overkill.
It was as though Scorsese simply
couldn't bring himself to edit his own film. “I am a genius and
this three-minute scene – one of several three minute scenes of
dialog or sex or drugs – is simply too wonderful to cut. Let's
leave it in!”
For the love of God, cut the scene!
When the end credits actually started
to roll, I heaved a sigh of relief. Thank-you, Jesus, it's over.
I'm so glad I didn't pony up 12 bucks
to see this turkey in the theater. The $1.59 it cost me at Red Box
was bad enough.
Are there explosions?
ReplyDeleteOnly my head!
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