The Wolf of Wall
Street is both a Martin Scorsese movie and a crime against cinema. It’s a soulless, brainless, lazy, relentlessly ugly calamity it’s hard not to read as hostile to its audience—an
audience out fully three hours of its one and only life
on earth by the time the nightmare’s over.
This is a film that asks the searing question, "What happens if you lift a bunch of fictional 'men' out of a Bud Light ad, drop them into an NC-17 playground, and let the cameras roll?"
And then leave nothing on the cutting-room floor?
This is a film that asks the searing question, "What happens if you lift a bunch of fictional 'men' out of a Bud Light ad, drop them into an NC-17 playground, and let the cameras roll?"
And then leave nothing on the cutting-room floor?
I’d synopsize the story, but there is no story.
I’d mention the characters, but there are no characters.
There’s just a bloated, depthless cartoon that makes
the idiotic mistake of cranking the debauchery knob to an anemic “10” when it’s well
over two decades now since Bret Easton Ellis gave us a similarly revolting Wall
Street nightmare (American Psycho) with
the knob wrenched to 12 and a half.
If debauchery's all you're going for, and you can’t get your knob to at least 13, what's the point?