The wolf of wall street full movie watch online dailymotion

THE WOLF OF WALL STREET is a perfect companion to GOODFELLAS, Martin Scorsese’s other masterpiece, as both films are based on memoirs of morally dubious men who fell in love with a criminal culture, and lived the lifestyle to the fullest while they could before the inevitable reckoning, one that included ratting out their compatriots in crime. While Henry Hill’s story concerned life in the small time Mafia, Jordan Belfort, the protagonist of WOLF, was determined to be a high rolling stockbroker on Wall Street, where he could enjoy all the vices too much money could buy. While few have rated WOLF on the level of GOODFELLAS, I think it is one of Scorsese’s most entertaining films, one with a tremendous rewatch factor. Some chided Scorsese for using his tried and true (and by implication, over used) bag of tricks to tell the story, from showy tracking shots, a soundtrack full of oldies (Laura Branigan’s “Gloria” in Italian), to having Jordan break the fourth wall and directly address the audience at pertinent moments. I think the director’s signature moves were perfect for this story, especially when it came to the fourth wall, as it allowed for some exposition concerning the hows and wheres of stock manipulation that the audience needs to understand in order to make sense of Jordan’s actions.

At a three hour running time, WOLF tells the story of Jordan Belfort from his early days as a junior stock broker just before the Crash of ’87, an event that nearly ended his career before it had gotten started proper, to his landing on his feet hawking penny stocks in a Long Island boiler room, a position from which he rose to build Stratton Oakmont, a seemingly respectable brokerage firm, that was in reality just a pump and dump operation, which fraudulently over valued cheap stocks to the firm’s benefit. It was all a scam built on Jordan’s undeniable talent at the “hard sell.” While clients were fleeced, Jordan and his associates made hundreds of millions, which of course they didn’t report and pay taxes on. Ultimately, this house of cards collapsed under the scrutiny of an FBI and an SEC investigation, but Jordan and his friends lived it up while they could in a haze of women, booze, and drugs. What our Woke betters might call “toxic masculinity.” Some viewers were put off by scene after scene of bad boys living it up in one debauched bacchanal after another, but I think that was the point Scorsese and screenwriter, Terrence Winter, were trying to make: the wages of sin can look pretty attractive, that’s why so many buy in.

There is much to take away from WOLF depending on your point of view, and one of the things I got out of Scorsese’s film is that Jordan Belfort, masterfully played by Leonardo DiCaprio, is the poster boy for much of what has gone wrong in America in the last four decades, as we have become a country that no longer produces things so much as make deals that profit some at the expense of others. Where there are always winners and losers, where the only success that matters is material success, specifically material success in excess; where the winners are entitled to more…and more…and more. Jordan is like so many who came to believe that the rules were for losers, and that he was clever enough to get away with it where so many others got caught.

Yet, while many consider Jordan Belfort trash, I found qualities in him, at least as he is presented in the film, that I grudgingly admired, specifically in the way he landed on his feet after losing his high paying Wall Street job by going to work in a strip mall boiler room. The scene where DiCaprio walks in and shows the other poor fools there how to cold call a client and get his money is one of my favorites. The way he was loyal to his shlubby crew – Donny, Chester, Rugrat – a group of doughy mediocrities that are as about as far from the Cool Kids and Golden Boys as one could get, all of whom he took with him to the top, never cheating them, making them part of his success. In the end, he would give up their names to the FBI only because the Bureau had his back to the wall and he was looking at many years in prison. I was struck by the scene where, at real risk to himself, Jordan warns Donny he is wearing a wire: that is something Henry Hill would never have done. Though he is not in any way husband material, I do think Jordan genuinely cared for both of his wives.

And as far as I’m concerned, THE WOLF OF WALL STREET is one of the funniest films of the 2010s. I laughed harder at it than almost any “official” comedy of the past ten years. The sequence of Jordan and Donny under the influence of the Lemon 714 Quaaludes is a masterpiece of physical comedy, hilarious and horrifying at the same time, and played to perfection by DiCaprio and Jonah Hill. The entire cast is pitch perfect, including the aforementioned Hill, but also Rob Reiner (though in no universe do I believe he is the father of Leonardo DiCaprio), Kyle Chandler, Jon Bernthal, Ethan Suplee, Joanna Lumley, Kenneth Choi, Shea Whigham, and Jon Favreau. Matthew McConaughey has a mic drop of a cameo early in the film as Jordan’s mentor, and then walks out of the film. For me, this is the movie that put Margot Robbie on my radar; she is the epitome of drop dead gorgeous as Naomi, Jordan’s second wife. Scorsese makes better use of Jean Dujardin than THE ARTIST did, casting him as a shady Swiss banker, happy to take Jordan’s money, not so pleased to return it. That is Bo Dietl as himself; he’s become part of Scorsese’s stock company. And this is the movie that I will always believe DiCaprio should have won the Best Actor Oscar for. It is an utterly fearless performance from beginning to end, and I’m not just talking about his dance moves at Jordan’s wedding reception. Too bad he had to go up against McConaughey’s work in THE DALLAS BUYERS CLUB.

I think the final scene, where the real life Jordan Belfort introduces DiCaprio to a packed room at a sales seminar, resonates more now than it did when the movie was released. This is where Scorsese turns the camera around and it glides over the seminar’s participants sitting in rows, their rapt attention focused on DiCaprio, who after prison is reinventing himself as a motivational speaker. I think it is Scorsese’s way of saying that some of the problem, and responsibility, here rests with the audience. That guys like Jordan would never have gotten away with so much if there had not been for people who confused conniving and deviousness with smarts. Who fell for glib hucksters who had no moral qualms about telling people exactly what they wanted to hear. Looking back today, we should have paid better attention.