Stories have abounded about the epic bouts of punishing location shooting that went into Alejandro González Iñárittu's frontier saga. Seeing the results on screen, you'd have to say that whatever suffering the cast and crew had to endure, it was worth it, and The Revenant's 12 Oscar nominations will be balm to their bruised and battered limbs.
It’s stockbroker Goodfellas, basically. If you enjoyed Martin Scorsese’s pacey, flashy, beautifully shot ensemble gangster flicks, Goodfellas and Casino, there’s little doubt you’ll enjoy this. Here the master director, absolutely on fire, has his cake and eats it with the “based-on-a-true-story” saga of corrupt stockbroker Jordan Belfort’s rise and fall. The central character, played with audacious, astounding flare by Leonardo DiCaprio, exudes charisma from every pore and guzzles pleasure by the raw ton, taking no prisoners. While Belfort is a ruthless, unpleasant protagonist, the sort of man who causes utter misery through his selfishness, the viewer cannot help but clamber aboard Scorsese and DiCaprio’s demented rollercoaster and root for his sheer lust for life.
The comic actor Jonah Hill also outdoes himself as Belfort’s sidekick Donnie Azoff. Where Belfort is messianic and mesmeric, Azoff is a slobby, venal loser riding the gravy train. Their story takes Belfort from his start at high class brokers LF Rothschild, through the crash of 1987 and onto his own outfit Stratton Oakmont, with their wildly successful “pump and dump” securities fraud schemes, eventually reaching an inevitable and unhappy unravelling. The details paint a picture of a warped, morally corrupt, male culture but the film is primarily a monstrous tale of hubris, played out at maximum extravagance, often for great big roaring laughs, and is utterly gripping for its entire three hours, a visual cacophony of cocaine, sex, money and excess. The sequence where Belmont come unstuck taking ancient Quaaludes he mistakenly presumed had lost their potency, before driving his Porsche and having a wasted ruck with Azoff, is as shocking, entertaining and riveting as anything I’ve seen in any film for a long time.
There are other great performances too, of course, notably Australian actress Margot Robbie as Belfort’s wife Naomi and a scenery-annihilating cameo by Matthew McConaughey as the Rothschild broker who shows Belmont the ropes. The restaurant scene alone, where DiCaprio takes advice from McConaughey, is more fun than most films manage end-to-end. This is hyperactive, over-the-top film-making constructed with the smash’n’grab zest of a true cinematic genius. I can’t recommend it enough.
There are no extras on the DVD but the Blu-ray edition comes with a “making of” documentary, The Wolf Pack, a featurette called Running Wild about the pre-production process, and a round-table featuring DiCaprio, Scorsese, Hill, etc, discussing the movie.
Overleaf: Watch the trailer
It was Benjamin Franklin who said "money has never made man happy...the more of it one has the more one wants," and there is no shortage of examples of boundless greed and how an abundance of cash can upturn and empty lives. Based on the memoir of Jordan Belfort, a former stockbroker convicted of fraud, The Wolf of Wall Street gives us one such example. This is Martin Scorsese's 23rd narrative feature and with it he proves that, at 71, he's inarguably still got it, with a flamboyantly immoral tale very much for and of our age, which is apparently the most effing foul-mouthed film in the history of cinema.
Scripted by Terence Winter, The Wolf of Wall Street sees Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) enter the weird world of Wall Street as an ambitious young pup with a devoted, darling hairdresser wife (Cristin Milioti). He's taken under the wing of a cawing, coked-up eagle played by (a show-stealing) Matthew McConaughey, who gives him some chest-beating musical mentorship over lunch in a scene to treasure. Unfortunately Belfort's timing couldn't be worse as he secures his broker's licence on 1987's Black Monday, and is immediately hoofed out of the firm.
Showing that you just can't keep a greedy prick down, and with opportunities in the big league non-existent, Belfort turns his attention to penny stocks - applying his city slicker's nous to ruthlessly rinse those who can't afford to lose even small amounts, whilst teaching his "knucklehead" friends how to do the same. One of those, Donnie (Jonah Hill, pictured above), becomes his partner in crime; he's an obese lad with "phosphorescent" teeth, married to his first cousin ("if anyone's gonna fuck my cousin that's gonna be me"), who readily admits that it's likely that his kids will be retarded. Together they turn Stratton Oakmont into a billion-dollar brokerage firm - a law unto itself, staffed by barbarians - before the FBI come a-sniffing.
Scorsese has long dealt in anti-heroes, making great use of DiCaprio over the years, and there's an obvious comparison in the similarly biographical, comparably conveyed Goodfellas. But it's interesting to note the career of the film's screenwriter Terence Winter, who rose to prominence as writer / executive producer of The Sopranos and more recently as the creator of the marvellous Boardwalk Empire (there are cameos from several Boardwalk stalwarts). They are shows that lionise criminals but simultaneously show them as greatly troubled men, who suffer the consequences of their actions in terms of their business and in the damage that's inflicted on their psyche. Both make formidable use of the lengthier, more searching character development facilitated by TV as a medium.
As with Winter's previous work, the crooks take centre stage in The Wolf of Wall Street. However, rather than ramming home a moral, or painting a conflicting picture, the film instead drills home the screw-tomorrow excess, ultimately proving itself exhaustingly brash. It's told by a man living large, conscience-free, and who is thus obnoxious, unapologetic and chaotic. For instance, the untimely deaths of friends and colleagues are skirted over - Belfort doesn't want to dwell on that - and one marriage is quickly dealt a death blow (only vaguely felt) in order to usher another sucker in (Margot Robbie's glamorous Naomi, pictured below).
The Wolf of Wall Street is said to have outraged and appalled senior Academy members at recent awards screenings and it's a film which screams in your face that it's having fun, almost as if the filmmakers themselves are on something: Scorsese's pumped-up orchestration, Rodrigo Prieto's carnival-like visuals, Thelma Schoonmaker's energetic editing and Winter's potty-mouthed poetry fuse to form an appropriate evocation of a life cranked up to 11.
It's a film that's huge amounts of fun, but there is a message in there: in the very hollowness, cruelty and precariousness of Belfort's existence, he's living a twisted version of the American dream, presenting a middle finger to both its people and the system, and it's just up to you whether to choose to see it. As the laughs and inebriated antics get wearing - and they do - you might notice that the lines on DiCaprio's baby face mirror the cracks in his marriage. Yet just one sequence bears the hallmarks of anything resembling conventional filmic morality - it's a punch in the gut, quite literally, wiping the smile off our faces and making clear our complicity in this act and all that's gone before. It comes as a shock and is almost more powerful for its isolation.
The film's portrayal of women is, to be honest, pretty troubling. No doubt Scorsese and co are making a point about a world where women are routinely demeaned, or expected to accept the objectification of their gender (and by such mediocre men!) Despite this, it remains dispiriting that the film chooses to channel Belfort in this particular respect, reducing its most prominent female Naomi to nowt but a sex-pot, gold-digger, and reckless mother. Belfort might be no better than a reptile himself but, as played by an on-fire DiCaprio, he can at least be horribly charming and hilarious - a scene where he suffers the delayed effects of some very old prescription medication is likely to see off all-comers for the most hysterical sequence of 2014.
With appearances from Joanna Lumley and The Artist's Jean Dujardin providing the cherries on an already very overloaded knickerbocker glory, it's a feast of sorts. Scorsese and Winter have, quite deliberately, made a movie that for a long time is easy to chuckle at and guzzle down but, like its protagonist, is ultimately hard to like. But whether it's a begrudging or emphatic embrace, you just can't deny their chutzpah.
MORE MARTIN SCORSESE ON THEARTSDESK
Taxi Driver (1976). Talking to me? Scorsese's classic starring Robert De Niro (pictured) is restored and re-released on its 35th anniversary
Shutter Island (2010). Not a blinder: Leonardo DiCaprio in Martin Scorsese's feverish paranoid thriller
Hugo (2011). Scorsese does a Spielberg in sumptuous look at the origins of cinema
George Harrison - Living in the Material World (2011). Martin Scorsese's epic documentary of the Quiet One
Arena: The 50 Year Argument (2014). A warmly engaging film about the 'New York Review of Books' might have been more than a birthday love-in
Vinyl (2016). Scorsese and Jagger's series is prone to warping, skipping and scratches
Silence (2016). Scorsese's latest is a mammoth, more ponderous than profound
Overleaf: watch the trailer for The Wolf of Wall Street
There’s something profoundly infantile about Quentin Tarantino’s quest to right the wrongs of history. Last time round he was retroactively bitchslapping the Nazis for the Holocaust. Here he’s punishing Americans who accrued obscene wealth out of slavery. In both films baddies galore get royally ketchupped. What’s next? Backdated justice for the Injuns? Oh shoot, Disney already pulled off that judicial backflip in Pocahontas.
The mothership has landed. After a year or so of countless stage adaptations ranging from a recitation of the novel in its entirety to a themed party and (just this week) a dance piece, Baz Luhrmann's celluloid version of The Great Gatsby has finally arrived in all its superhero-style 3D scale and scope. So, is this Gatsby great? Not by some measure, and for every moment of inspiration and ingenuity comes another that fails both its literary source and Luhrmann's own instincts.
With its exuberant blood-spray, rambunctious dialogue and generous running time, Django Unchained is writer-director Quentin Tarantino’s first full foray into Westerns. Although it’s not a remake, it pays tribute to Sergio Corbucci’s 1966 Spaghetti Western Django, not only in name but in its use of the title song - which opens this movie as it opened that one - and in the fleeting appearance of the original's game star, Franco Nero (pictured below right).
People tend to know three things about J.Edgar Hoover: that he was in charge of America’s internal security for four decades; that he kept secret files on the political elite; and that the most powerful unelected man in the nation's history liked to throw on ladies’ attire. Although sadly only two of the above turn out to be true, the facts have not stopped Clint Eastwood and Leonardo DiCaprio from at least flirting with the elephant in the room.
Inception is as lucid and heartfelt as summer blockbusters get these days. It is a rigorously built action spectacle about the persistence of memories and ideas, with an intelligent, committed cast led by Leonardo DiCaprio.