DRAMA; 2hr 59min
STARRING: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie
Going for broke: Robbie and DiCaprio
At 26, Jordan Belfort (DiCaprio) heads his own brokerage firm and eats a multimillion-dollar life alive. “[Money] makes you a better person,” he maintains in an ebullient voice over. In his case, that person is a drug-zapped adrenaline addict mainlining — while subverting — the American Dream. And yep, Belfort is an actual wolf who in 1998 was given a three-year sentence for securities fraud and money laundering and is now — only in America — a motivational speaker.
How did he get there? According to director Martin Scorsese’s riotous Jumbotron based on Belfort’s book, by being the greatest salesman on every playing field. Then by breaking rules right and left in the express building of his shmuck-staffed Long Island boiler room into the blue-chip Stratton Oakmont brokerage. The energy on the floor is rapacious. Everybody is filthy rich! Until the FBI comes calling.
At 39, DiCaprio isn’t the spring chook that Jordan starts out as but no matter: he’s a projectile that blows every scene out of the shark-infested water, with support from the likes of a calculatedly cockeyed Hill as Belfort’s right hand. Their crash-burn comedown is unsurprisingly brutal. But great balls of fire, did they have a blast.
