Martin Scorseses: The Wolf of Wall Street

One of my favorite movies of all time would have to be Martin Scorseses The Wolf of Wall Street. Scorseses 2013 movie starred Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill along with many others in the telling of Jordan Belforts infamous business ventures with Donnie Azoff, all while evading the authorities. The movie cost $155 million to produce and grossed $392 million in the box office.

Scorsese did a masterful job in illustrating the history of Jordan Belfort. Belfort was new on Wall Street, until the business he was working for went under within a week. He eventually decides to trick big name businesses into buying penny stocks for extremely large shares, and he invites his friend Donnie to work with him. He grows his company until it is dominating Wall Street, but the FBI begins investigating his practices and he has to cover himself, until he eventually has to sell out most of the people in the company to keep himself from extensive jail time. DiCaprio does a brilliant job at reflecting Belforts character, as he maintains a cocky and yet intelligent composure for the entire movie. Whenever he was interrogated by authorities he would always be confident in assuring the fact he was innocent, but kept a drop of arrogance in his voice so that it was visible that he was guilty, but the authorities could not do anything to stop him. Also, DiCaprios and Hills acting during scenes when they were high on drugs was amazing as well, as it perfectly reflected how Jordan and Donnies lives were. They would do cocaine in the morning, conduct their business and then drink and take Quaaludes to party at night. DiCaprio and Hill would always be carefree and clearly under the influence of something in many scenes, thus accurately reflecting how Jordan and Donnies lives actually were. However, this accurate reflection can be traced back to the intelligence of Scorsese. One great thing he did in his rendition of Belforts life was making it unclear of exactly what happened during some events of Belforts life. Since he based this movie upon Belforts autobiography, Scorsese makes a point to make some of the events of Belforts life unclear. The autobiography has been stated to be inaccurate and that some of the events Belfort recalled were inaccurate due to the amount of drugs he was doing. For example, at the beginning of the movie, DiCaprio recalls a red Ferrari but then corrects himself and says that it was white instead. Also, he later recalls driving home from a country club while on massive amounts of Quaaludes, stating that he drove home at a snails pace without hitting anything, when in reality he drove home extremely fast and trashed the car. These details point out how inaccurate Belforts story could potentially be, and is a spark of masterful intelligence on Scorseses part. He even makes a point to have Belfort himself introduce DiCaprio as Belfort at an event. This creative cameo just further shows how intelligently Scorsese could adapt the autobiography into a masterful film.

The Wolf of Wall Street has been reviewed to be another one of Scorseses greats. It has been said to be a brilliant reflection on the dark and rotten society that exists today. DiCaprio has been praised for being a humorous and yet accurate representation of Jordan Belfort, and was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance in the movie. In my opinion, this movie is one of the best movies of our time; Scorsese adds on to his buffed resume by creating this masterpiece of a movie. It does a tremendous job at showing how intelligent Belfort was in finding a way to cheat the system to make his fortune, and yet how rotten he is in doing so. I personally found myself impressed with his actions (even though he had bad intentions) because he found a way to cheat the system in no way that anyone else had before. No other director could have made this movie as well as Scorsese did, he knew exactly how to portray Belfort as a twisted and intelligent man. The only person I could imagine who could make this movie to a level as impressive as Scorsese would be Quentin Tarantino, but it would have been more abstract and less matched how Belforts autobiography was written. Scorsese was the only person who could make a good enough movie on Belforts life that even Belfort himself would want to be in it.

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