Indulgent, decadent, and highly entertaining, the story pushes the R rating, as well as pushes past three hours of screen time. And it’s that overkill of time – too much of a good thing – that makes the film miss its near-perfection mark. After a while the scenes begin to repeat themselves and gee…how much T & A screen time does a story need?
The wolf, Jordan Belfort (Leo DiCaprio) isn’t nearly as much about money as he is about drugs and sex and power. But when the film opens, he narrates in a boast that he makes shy of a $1,000,000 a week which isn’t bad for a kid from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.
But it all began at his first brokerage job trained under his first boss (Matthew McConaughey) who steals his scene as a nut job ego- maniac who teaches Jordan to create urgency until they falter on Black Monday 1987. But that failure doesn’t stop our Jordan Belfort once he’s a certified broker. He becomes a con artist of penny stocks, setting up shop in a strip mall and hiring Donnie (Johan Hill, in his best performance to date) as a school teacher and father who turns into a loose canyon with a bunch of local goombah’s soon buying themselves the luxuries from their clients’ risks. The movie from that moment on is a complete F*&*K –fest of drugs, cash, mansions helicopters and flashy Ferraris.
Eventually Jordan leaves his sweet first wife for his second wife, Naomi (Margot Robbie) a gorgeous blonde with pin-up looks whose looks deflate every time she opens her cheap-accented mouth.
You might ask why do we care about our guy Jordan, but we do. With his boyish charm, and sinking in deeper mistakes, the audience’s superior position is won over by all things Leo DiCaprio. This is the film American Hustle only wishes it could be since we don’t bond with Christian Bale the same way.
Enter an FBI agent (Kyle Chandler) who also has dreams and wishes he took the path to stock broker instead of law enforcement, eager to bring Jordan down. His flawless and calm performance is his best ever.
Based on the 2007 memoir Martin Scorcese directs and delivers in a highly entertaining film that gets the best performance out of DiCaprio in his adult career since Titanic. Scorcese is the king of Good Fellas, and the film has that sexual camaraderie between Brooklyn Boys. In some of his scenes, DiCaprio channels a young and insane DeNiro. It feels like Casino and it feels like Good Fellas. It would have felt like an Oscar nominee if only it had been forty highly-entertaining minutes shorter.
♕ ♚ ♛ 1/2