“THE WOLF OF WALL STREET” Rated R. At AMC Loews Boston Common, Regal Fenway Stadium and suburban theaters. Grade: A
Are you ready for the real “Great Gatsby”? “The Wolf of Wall Street,” Martin Scorsese’s scathingly funny depiction of a group of morally depraved, drug-addled stock traders in the 1980s and ’90s is the crowning achievement of the director’s five-film collaboration with Leonardo DiCaprio.
It is also the best American film of the year, better even than Steve McQueen’s “12 Years a Slave” and David O. Russell’s “American Hustle.” After 23 years, Scorsese has delivered a rejiggered version of his 1990 mob masterpiece “GoodFellas” for a new generation.
Based on a 2008 memoir by Jordan Belfort, the film begins with Belfort (DiCaprio) being mentored by legendary, if also insane trader Mark Hanna (another brilliant bit by red-hot Matthew McConaughey). After the crash of 1987 kills Hanna’s bank, Belfort founds his own business in a Long Island automobile repair shop dubbing it Stratton Oakmont. The company sells blue-chip stocks and hugely profitable penny stocks and makes a fortune for its traders as long as they are able to lure poor suckers into betting big. Along with his preppie wannabe pal Donnie Azoff (a terrific Jonah Hill), Belfort parties like a rock star. From a palatial waterfront beach house in the Hamptons to a “boat fit for a Bond villain,” Belfort and his stunning wife Naomi (an excellent Margot Robbie), the “Duchess of Bay Ridge,” have it all. But like so many self-made men in the movies, Belfort blows it — “Scarface”-style — on booze, coke, hookers, Lambos and bottle after bottle of the hypnotic drug methaqualone.
We see bacchanalian parties. Rivers of booze and drugs flow, and period music selected by Robbie Robertson provides a running commentary. Like Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street,” which gets a shout-out (as does “Freaks”), Scorsese exposes an American institution as a den of thieves. Greed turns these men into sexual swine. A scene in which Belfort is overtaken by the delayed effect of expired Quaaludes is going to be talked about for years. DiCaprio sings Terence Winter’s operatic dialogue like the Pavarotti of the flesh pits.
In addition to DiCaprio, Hill and McConaughey, the cast is superb: Kyle Chandler as a dogged FBI agent, Joanna Lumley as Naomi’s sexy English auntie, Jon Bernthal as a Long Island drug dealer and weightlifter and Rob Reiner as Belfort’s father. Hear them howl.
(“The Wolf of Wall Street” contains drugs, nudity, sex and lewd language.)
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