Wolf of Wall Street

The Wolf of Wall Street directed by Martin Scorsese, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Johan Hill, Matthew McConaughey, Rob Reiner, Kyle Chandler, Margot Robbie, and John Favreau.

Before I get too far into talking about this movie, I just want to say I really like this poster.

I liked this movie but - and that's a huge but - there's just not that many likeable characters in this movie, which means I didn't have much invested empathy-wise with the characters, that when bad things started happening to them - I didn't feel sorry for them and I was more on the side of the FBI agents than the main characters in the movies.  I've heard this movie compared to Goodfellas, only instead of huge amounts violence and blood, Wolf has sex and nudity instead.  This is a fair comparison but like I said before there is no sympathy for any of the main characters in this movie, unlike Goodfellas.  Goodfellas built the main character of Henry Hill into a complex three dimensional character so when things happened to him I felt sorry and sympathetic towards him despite how bad his character might have been.  Wolf offers so such characters.  In fact most of the characters are assholes, now a good screenplay writer would have done a little more them to help guide the audience through the world of the movie.  I think of Goodfellas, A Clockwork Orange, and Dallas Buyers Club as good examples of movies that generated some real sympathy for some unlikeable characters and that actually made those characters likeable despite the things they did.

This is by far the funniest movie Scorsese has directed with plenty of moments that were very funny and the almost 3 hour run time goes by pretty fast, helped along with some very good directing (not great directing but very competent directing) and a cast that throws themselves wholeheartedly into their characters.  The set pieces, production, and costumes all go into making a very stylishly, slickly made movie that is very easy on the eyes, as they help to make that run time go by with a speed of a two hour movie. 

The whole sum of this movie is one of decadence and greed and reminded me a little bit of the movie Caligula and the life of Caligula.  It was a modern day Rome, which I imagine is lot how most of the rich people who didn't actually earn their money with hard, honest work, live because their morals and values don't go hand in hand with how they made their money.