The Wolf of Wall Street

Martin Scorsese is a well known staple of Hollywood. He has churned classic after classic out including Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, Gangs of New York, and The Departed. Scorsese has rejoined with Leonardo DiCaprio for a fifth time to reestablish his supremacy in Hollywood.

In 1987, Jordan Belfort joined a prestigious stock brokerage company on Wall Street. Unfortunately the first day after him passing his broker exam was Black Monday. As Belfort puts it in the movie "Wall Street had swallowed me up and s*** me right back out." But that doesn't slow down Jordan Belfort, soon he made a name for himself in trading penny stocks and sets out with his new friend Donnie Azoff to form their own company. Money are what they care about, lies are how they get it...who even cares? It is Wall Street after all...

The Wolf of Wall Street is a fantastic film cinematically speaking. Incredible directing from Scorsese, fantastic performances by DiCaprio and Jonah Hill, and a captivating story about the rise and fall of a stock market guru. But the content and message is much more problematic. Wolf now holds the new world record for most uses of the F-word in a non-documentary, mainstream film. It had to be edited (in my opinion not nearly enough) to avoid the NC-17 rating. It borderlines glorification of drug use, loose sex, and shady to downright illegal business tactics. The antihero can be said to get his comeuppance but a three year prison sentence in a place where "it's not so bad if you're rich" isn't really what I call justice. I heard one teen behind me jokingly say after the film: "Well that was good. Let's go do drugs and sell people s***!" When you think about it, it's a pretty scary thing to joke about...and a terrible thing to get from a movie...