The Wolf of Wall Street

The Wolf of Wall Street is the biographical story of Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio), a stock broker on Wall Street and is directed by Martin Scorsese.

Belfort is keen to make money, lots of it, but sees his initial job at L.F. Rothschild taken away from him when the firm collapses following the 1987 stock market crash. After hitting rock bottom, he bounces back working for a firm selling penny stocks. 

He quickly discovers that he can make good commission on these trades and quickly forms his own company Stratton Oakmont Inc. He recruits an unlikely bunch of guys to work for him including Donnie Azoff (Jonah Hill), who quickly becomes his right hand man.

Belfort’s extraordinary business mind ensures that Stratton Oakmont went from strength to strength, making the huge piles of money that he dreamt about. Forbes Magazine writes an article on the firm calling him ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ and the name stuck. Forbes also points out that his methods were rather dubious and that he was misleading investors whilst Stratton Oakmont’s staff lived a life on debauchery on the profits.

The film depicts life at Stratton Oakmont as one long outrageous party where the only thing as important as the money is the orgy of sex and drugs that it can buy. Here too Belfort is the ring leader, wallowing in a raucous excess of cocaine, prescription pills, non-prescription pills, alcohol and women.

Yet when he meets Naomi (Margot Robbie) he is smitten and has to have her. Despite her boyfriend and his wife, they are naked in bed the next day. In the end they marry, settle down and have a child... well she does. Belfort continues as before.

 

It is satire and is probably a reflection on today's society and on Wall Street itself. Whether it is wildly exaggerated satire is open to debate.  

Eventually the FBI start investigating and Agent Patrick Denham (Kyle Chandler) is on their case causing Belfort to attempt to smuggle all his cash out to Switzerland. Here is assisted by a corrupt banker Jean-Jacques Saurel (Jean Dujardin) and opens the account in the name of Naomi's aunt Emma (Joanna Lumley).

As the FBI close in, he is offered a deal to avoid jail but Belfort decides he doesn't want to be saved, turns it down and eventually the whole company is taken down.

When you read up on Jordan Belfort it becomes apparent that Martin Scorsese kept to the story as much as possible, which is a bit of a rarity for Hollywood. What he gives us is a film that is swift, energetic and enormously entertaining. It did not feel like a three hour production because there is not a quiet moment in it.

It's also one of the funniest things I've seen for a long time but that depends on your sense of humour. It is also likely to offend some people but only if you object to explicit language, explicit sex, explicit nudity, explicit drug etc etc.

It is one hell of a good film and Leonardo DiCaprio is, I have to say, simply terrific. If he doesn't win the Oscar for this, he probably never will. 

Moneyball

In 2001 the Oakland A’s baseball team lost to the New York Yankees in the divisional playoffs. This wasn’t surprising considering the payroll of the Yankees was triple that of the A’s. It’s a situation that isn’t going to change either and the A’s are set to lose three of their star players to teams who can afford to pay more for their services.

The general manager of the A’s, Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), and his scouts start debating who they can recruit to replace them.

Beane is not impressed with any of the options and realises that in order to compete, they need to totally re-think the way they recruit players. Then, by chance, he stumbles across Pete Brand (Jonah Hill), an economics graduate working for another team who believes he has a better system. A system purely based on statistics. A system that didn’t care if a player was too old, spent all his time in strip clubs or if his girlfriend wasn’t photogenic enough, provided he got the runs.

Beane recruits Brand to be his assistant and then much to the annoyance of his scouts, they go about recruiting new players based on data not scouting, even the ones who frequent strip clubs and have ugly girlfriends.

Another person who was unimpressed by this was Art Howe (Philip Seymour Hoffman) the team's head coach and he refuses to pick the players that Beane and Brand have bought for him. When the club embark on a disastrous start to the season, everyone blames Beane’s purchases but the two of them refuse to be diverted from their strategy. Instead Beane sells a couple of the players the coach is picking to force his hand. I don't quite understand why he didn't just fire his coach but selling the players has the correct effect and the team embark on an all-time major league record of 20 consecutive wins.

They top their division and again reach the playoffs, only to lose at the same stage again. The point though has been made and Beane is headhunted by another team, although ultimately he decides to stay in Oakland.

It’s an interesting film and a true story. I love all the statistical stuff, but it does uses jargon that only baseball fans would comprehend, so an understanding of the game would be useful. I feel a lot of the actual results were glossed over but as this is all factual, if you’re in America you probably know the details of what happened.

Pitt is good and I'm a bit of a Pitt convert over the last few years. Although I can't see anything in this that warranted his Oscar nomination but he is as good in this as has been in most of his recent work. Recommended.