Saturday, February 1, 2014

THE WOLF OF WALL STREET

It takes a certain type of person - and a fair degree of ruthlessness and emotional unattachment - to work and succeed on Wall St and in the stock market. The chaos, stress, greed, exhilaration and deceit of that world is brought to life with a ton of great humour in Martin Scorcsese's adaptation of Jordan Belfort's memoir The Wolf of Wall Street. I didn't find it as debauched as many people have made it out to be (a lifetime devouring scuzzy 70s & 80s exploitation films kinda sets your expectations high when it comes to onscreen perversion) but it was wildly entertaining and involving for the most part, structurally rather similar to Goodfellas. Nice soundtrack selection, impossibly beautiful women and strong performances across the board, but particularly by an almost emaciated-looking Matthew McConaughey, Rob Reiner, and scene-stealer Jonah Hill. A treat to see Joanna Lumley back on the big screen, as well. Scorsese shows once again he still has a lot to say as a filmmaker. It didn't sound to me like there was an excessive overuse of it, but apparently the word 'fuck' is spoken 569 times in The Wolf of Wall Street, the second-most uses of the word in a non-pornographic, English language film (the current record, with a count of 857, belongs to - not surprisingly - the 2005 documentary Fuck).