The Wolf Of Wall Street is a crime/comedy based on a true life story that debuted on December 25, 2013.

When the movie opens, we are introduced to the eccentric Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio), who is a low time stock broker. He lands a job working for Mark Hanna (Matthew McConaughey, True Detective), but Mark’s brokerage company, L.F. Rothschild, goes broke and Jordan is forced to relocate to Long Island, New York. There he gets a job at a penny stoke brokerage, but decides that he would fare off better financially if he started his own business. 

Jordan sets out to hire his own employees including; Donnie “Diamond” Porush (Jonah Hill), Chester Ming (Kenneth Choi), Brad Bodnick (Jon Bernthal), and Nicky “Rugrat” Koskoff (P.J. Byrne), which none had any experience in the stock market. He starts his own business, Stratton Oakmont, and develops a script for them to use, when they call educated middle class people. They were making a profit, but it wasn’t enough for Jordan so he starts selling stock to the rich. The first cycle they cleared over $28,000,000 in commission.

Donnie introduces Jordan to his first hit of crack and then one thing led to another. Soon the group was out of control in every sense of the word. Forbes magazine named Jordan the “Wolf Of Wall street” and he became a super star, which resulted in hundreds of people showed up on his door step begging for a job. 

Jordan’s father, Max (Rob Reiner), begins to lecture him on how much money he was spending, which was going for extravagant dinners, prostitutes, drugs, and lots of partying. By this time Jordan and his wife, Teresa Petrillo (Cristin Milioti), were divorced and he was married to Naomi Lapaglia (Margot Robbie). 

Stratton publicly launched Steven Madden’s (Jake Hoffman) shoe company, which he made a whopping $22 million on the deal. The FBI sends out Detective Patrick Denham (Kyle Chandler) to investigate Jordan and Stratton, at which time Jordan attempts to bribe him, but Patrick denies his offer and calls him a “little man” and walks off his yacht.

Jordan puts his money in a bank in Switzerland thanks to the help of Brad’s family and aunt Emma (Joanna Lumley), who he trusts enough to reveal that he has drug and sex addictions. 

After driving high and wrecking his car Jordan is put under house arrest. The FBI and NASD continue to monitor Jordan’s criminal activity, after trying to offer him a plea deal, which he reluctantly refused. Naomi becomes tired of Jordan’s reckless lifestyle and she wants a divorce. She takes their two children and leaves him to stew on what he has done to her, their kids, and all the people that unknowingly invested in fraud stock. 

Will Jordan and Donnie be able to stay out of prison and stay on the straight and narrow or will they fail miserably?

Review

Wolf Of Wall Street is worth a watch if you like crazy, out of control comedy. The film begins and ends on a high momentum of energy and moves along at a very good pace for the length of the film. While it received a lot of criticism, due to the alleged animal abuse, the film did not focus on them very much and it could leave one guessing what the complaints were really about. Thumbs up to Leonardo DiCaprio, who did an excellent job in his role. The writing is done in a very professional way, but we could have done without a lot of the more vulgar dialogue. 

The film is based on the true life of Jordan Belfort and it appears that the writers stuck as close to the truth as possible according to Jordan, himself, but some of it still seems implausible to me. The screenplay was written in a way that prevented the movie from turning into a total disaster. This movie deserves an 8.5 out of 10.