In the errant tradition of Wall Street and Goodfellas, The Wolf of Wall Street is destined to be the next great film worshiped for all the wrong reasons. There is no question in my mind that Wolf will be howled at by men who see it as a calling rather than a warning. Am I going to rain on this parade? No, I agree that The Wolf of Wall Street is an excellent film. But I will play meteorologist before this is done.
The lupine icon is Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio), a man of many talents but just one virtue: loyalty. He will be loved for taking the brokerage firm Stratton Oakmont from pure imagination to billion dollar piracy — and doing everything from drugs to supermodels daily in the process. On Day 1, Belfort the noob arrives on Wall Street shy a pedigree and a clue. Diabolic mentor Mark Hanna (fantastic five-minute cameo by Matthew McConaughey) immediately steers him 
down the path of evil over a two-martini-&-cocaine lunch: as a broker, you create nothing, you take everything. Pleasing clients is a secondary concern if one at all; and the minute you make the client money, you take it from him because greed is easy to exploit, especially among the newly “fortunate.” Are you paying attention, America? Here’s the lesson. Here’s how the economy went down the tubes — because greedy men didn’t give a rat’s ass about even the people who made them rich. Greedy, ultra-rich men took and took. They didn’t share because sharing is for suckers. And they know greed is a philosophy, not an endpoint. It can be exploited forever.
The Wolf of Wall Street is an unabashed study of greed. The success –and failure– of capitalism lies squarely in the idea that even those who have been screwed by the greedy find greed more powerful than the contempt for their economic bullies. That’s the message, plain and simple. Is that what people will take from Wolf? Oh, HELL NO. That’s the magic of greed. It’s like a mist where all you see is the wealth and power and none of the side-effects. I, too, can be Jordan. He’s the man! Look at his lifestyle. All I have to do is read his script.
Contempt is an excellent word for this. We see Jordan on cold calls lying through his teeth with carefully crafted words and forked tongue; he literally laughs at the men he’s screwing. We view the office from his desk: how his voice cries
opportunity while his body language literally acts out sexual assault. Jordan learned the lesson so well from Hanna he’s able to build an empire from a garage with a staff full of idiots. And this is where greedy men will love this film — after their weekly assault on the American public, Stratton Oakmont then celebrates with a debauchery worthy of the prelude to Rome’s downfall: prostitutes, alcohol, feasts, drugs, midget-tossing … all manner of indulgence, joyous indulgence. Why indulge in just one deadly sin when you can have several at once? Stratton Oakmont even has to institute no prostitutes hours in the company bathroom stalls just to keep sanity — not that anybody pays attention to them.
The genius of this character study is in the mind set. Once established, Jordan has the routine of indulgence down pat. Jordan is a drug abuser on par with Jim Morrison — his lifestyle dictates it and his wealth allows it. While caught in a temporary lack of muscle control thanks to some very strong Quaaludes, he finds himself in need of saving the life of his choking protégé, Donnie Azoff (Jonah Hill). While an adjacent TV plays a Popeye cartoon where the weirdly misshapen vegetarian draws strength from spinach, Jordan finds strength through a hidden stash of cocaine. The juxtaposition of the two draws black humor among the most striking in cinematic history. This is Martin Scorsese doing what he does best.
That said, The Wolf of Wall Street is, quite simply put, one of the most sexist films ever made. Almost every female in the film is either a prostitute, a would-be prostitute, or somebody not attractive enough to be a prostitute (and, hence, a secretary). Jordan’s trophy-wife supermodel (selected 100% for body; Donnie openly masturbates in public at a party upon
viewing her for the first time) develops a spine somewhere in the middle of the film (she’s introduced giving our boy a hummer in his Ferrari), and when she does, Jordan laughingly reveals that she’s just exposed herself to the hired help. The one female player among the boys club is introduced more than two hours into the film and she feels tacked-on, like somebody suddenly remembered that female stock brokers do exist, much like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. Now, here’s the dilemma — I think Scorsese made a conscious choice to emphasize male dominance. i.e. the inherent sexism within Wall Street is a symptom of the disease. What’s wrong with unbounded capitalism starts with greed and ends with the exclusive fratboy mentality. The problem is that because of this, Wolf is going to appeal much more to sexist fratboy types than the rest of society. What will they take from this movie? Well, let me ask this — does anybody take from Goodfellas a lesson of remorse and regret? Because that’s what it was.
♪Hey there little red-voting stooge
you sure have pockets huge
you’re everything a big bad Wolf could want
What assets you have
the kind of holdings to drive wolves mad
just to see that you don’t get chaste
You should invest with me to be safe♫
Rated R, 180 Minutes
D: Martin Scorsese
W: Terence Winter
Genre: Robber baron
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Soulless Narcissistic American Kings of Economic Society
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Feminists
♪Parody inspired by “Little Red Riding Hood”
