THE WOLF OF WALL STREET: The Film Babble Blog Review

Opening today at a multiplex near you:



THE WOLF OF WALL STREET

(Dir. Martin Scorsese, 2013)

While last year’s Oscar winning ARGO summoned the ‘70s in its opening moments by using the old bright red Warner Brothers logo, and the recent release of AMERICAN HUSTLE did the same by way of a vintage Columbia Studios logo, THE WOLF OF WALL STREET, just goes with the current Paramount Pictures silver mountain design, proving upfront that it doesn’t need any help bringing the retro.



Martin Scorsese’s 23rd film, and fifth with Leonardo DiCaprio, nails the rampant excess of the ‘80s greed era with such a fearlessly funny, and raunchy as Hell glee that it makes Oliver Stone’s 1988 insider trading spectacle WALL STREET look like Sesame Street.



DiCaprio portrays Jordan Belfort, an ambitious Bronx-born stockbroker (or more accurately Stock swindler), who hit it rich in his ‘20s by founding the Long Island firm Stratton Oakmont. As our protagonist puts it in voice-over narration (and at times breaking the fourth wall asides to the audience): “The year I turned 26, I made 49 million dollars as the head of my own brokerage firm…which really pissed me off because it was three shy of a million a week.”



DiCaprio’s Belfort also tells us that he gambles “like a degenerate,” screws scores of hookers, has three different federal agencies looking to indict him, and, as if it’s the most important part of his personality, that he really loves drugs (a large mix of Quaaludes, Xanax, pot, and cocaine make up his daily regimen).



As DiCaprio’s partner in white collar crime and coke, Jonah Hill plays Donny Azoff (name changed to protect the guilty Danny Porush). Hill, with blindingly white capped teeth and funnier than he’s ever been, could be seen as the Joe Pesci to DiCaprio’s Ray Liotta if we were going to go down the GOODFELLAS goes to Wall Street route that many critics will no doubt take.



We witness DiCaprio’s corrupt character’s rise and fall by way of a furious pace provided by Scorsese’s longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker which never lets up until the end. It’s such an electrifying ride that it never drags or feels like it’s anywhere close to its actual length (it’s just under 3 hours at 179 minutes). In fact, I’m seriously hoping the Blu ray/DVD release features the four hour cut that’s been reported).



Everybody in the cast shines especially Matthew McConaughey in a short but sweet role as a mentor to DiCaprio who extols the virtues of jerking off, Kyle Chandler as a hard-nosed FBI agent looking to bust DiCaprio, Rob Reiner in an amusing performance as DiCaprio’s father who affects a fake British accent when speaking on the phone, THE ARTIST’s Jean Dujardin suavely playing a Swiss banker, The Walking Dead's Jon Bernthal as a tough guy cronie, and newcomer blonde bombshell Margot Robbie as DiCaprio’s former model wife.



Terence Winter’s Screenplay, based on Belfort’s book of the same name, is full of sharp dialogue (except when the characters are all coked up then it’s appropriately sloppy), plus obvious but inevitable references to Gordon Gekko, THE GODFATHER, and Thomas Wolfe’s 1987 novel “The Bonfire of the Vanities” (let's just forget the awful movie version) because Belfort, of course, considers himself a “Master of the Universe.”



The amped-up soundtrack is dead on as well with classic blues by the likes of John Lee Hooker, Howlin’ Wolf, and Elmore James rubbing up alongside Devo, Cypress Hill, and Sir Mix-A-lot (Scorsese restrained himself this time and included no Stones tracks), all under the supervision of another longtime Scorsese collaborator, The Band’s Robbie Robertson, who serves as executive music producer.



New to the Scorsese team is cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto (BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, ARGO) who captures in stunning tracking shots the swaggering sweep of its subject’s debauched lifestyle.



A stand-out sequence involving an DiCaprio, f-ed up beyond belief on a massive amount of Quaaludes having to crawl back to his car parked right outside at a country club reaches surreal heights of hilarity due in no small part to Prieto’s keen camera eye.



While I liked how David O’ Russell’s AMERICAN HUSTLE does a great job scamming folks into thinking they’re watching a Scorsese film, it’s so much more intoxicating to see the real thing.



At 71, Scorsese proves that he can still make master class cinema as THE WOLF OF WALL STREET is the director and DiCaprio’s finest film together, one that's much more deserving of a Best Picture Oscar than 2005’s THE DEPARTED, and I say that having really loved that movie.



Sure, WOLF covers similar ground to Scorsese's GOODFELLAS and CASINO in its wild depiction of money being the ultimate aphrodisiac, but its outlandish verve and gutsy-as-all-get-out attitude make it yet another major Marty masterpiece – a feast of a film that I can’t wait to go back to for a second helping.



More later...

The Hunt For Osama Bin Laden Is Intensely Told In ZERO DARK THIRTY

Opening today in the Triangle area:

ZERO DARK THIRTY (Dir. Kathryn Bigelow, 2012)

The buzz surrounding Kathryn Bigelow’s follow-up to her Oscar-winning THE HURT LOCKER is mixed with criticism of its supposed pro torture stance, but these protests (mainly from folks who haven’t seen it) are really small minded when considering the big complex picture of ZERO DARK THIRTY.

I never felt like Bigelow’s film, written by THE HURT LOCKER’s Oscar-winning screenwriter Mark Boal, was celebrating torture; I felt like the film was a challenging depiction of the decade-long hunt for Osama bin Laden that had to go to some very dark places to tell its story.

But let’s start at the beginning.

After a dark screen accompanies a collage of sound bites related to the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the film proper opens two years after 2001 at a C.I.A. “black site” with a few torture scenes that will make you as uncomfortable as Jessica Chastain is as an intelligence operative watching as a fellow officer (Jason Clarke) roughly interrogates an al Qaeda detainee (Reda Kateb).

This can be hard to watch, excruciating even, especially when Clarke, who repeatedly says “If you lie to me, I hurt you,” brings on the water boarding.

This intense torture results in one of the first clues in tracking down Bin Laden: the alias of the terrorist mastermind’s personal courier. Despite this lead, years pass (the film is inconsistent in telling us what year it is - after 2008, it seems, they assume we can figure it out), and Chastain comes up against resistance from her superiors (mainly Kyle Chandler as CIA Islamabad Station Chief), who want her to concentrate more on Homeland Security.

Speaking of Homeland, there are stretches of this movie that recall the Showtime series. Like Claire Danes’ character on that show, Chastain has no life except her job (or obsession) of hunting down terrorists. The characters are different, as here we get no background of mental instability, and Chastain would never sleep with the enemy.

As in THE HURT LOCKER, every explosion has a strong emotional impact. Particularly the 2008 Islamabad Marriott Hotel bombing which violently interrupts a meal Chastain is having with the closest she has to an actual friend in the movie - N.C. native Jennifer Ehle as a fellow analyst.

I don’t recall ex-president George W. Bush’s name being spoken in the film, and the shift of administrations is only reflected on a background T.V. broadcasting an interview by 60 Minutes’ journalist Steve Croft with Barack Obama, in which the president states “The United States does not torture.” So there’s no White House situation room point of view here.

Chastain and company’s initial lead finally pays off, when they follow Bin Laden’s suspected courier (Tushaar Mehra) to a large compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Bin Laden can’t be proven to be hiding at the compound, so nothing can be done immediately. 

After more surveillance, U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta (James Gandofini) asks Chastain and co. how certain they are of Bin Laden’s presence at the location, the others say around 70%, but Chastain replies: “100 percent, he's there. OK, 95 because I know certainty freaks you guys out. But it's 100.”

Unless you really aren’t informed of world events the last few years, it’s obvious that the movie’s climax will be the raid by Navy SEALs on the compound. One of the SEALs, Parks and Recreation’s Chris Pratt is skeptical of the mission, but the Squadron leader (Joel Edgerton) has more faith in Chastain’s confidence.

The raid, largely seen through the glowing green of the Seals’ night-vision goggles, ups the thriller quotient of the film, even when you know the intricate details of how it all ends.

The long, but not too long, ZERO DARK THIRTY was just nominated for 5 Oscars including Best Picture, but since Bigelow wasn’t nominated for Best Director it’s very doubtful that it will take home the big prize (I could see Chastain possibly winning though). That doesn’t take anything away from this film’s immersive plotting, excellent performances, and intense power. So don’t let the politics of the torture argument talk you out of seeing one of the year’s best films.

More later...