The Wolf of Wall Street (**1/2)

Martin Scorsese would seem to be the ideal person to tell the story of Jordan Belfort (Leonardo de Caprio). In movies like Raging Bull, Goodfellas, and The Aviator, he’s told stories of morally compromised men clawing their way to the top, often to be brought down by their enemies, or by their own flaws. Belfort, whose memoir was a basis for the film, was a New York stockbroker. Right in the opening voiceover, Belfort tells us about the drugs he takes, the prostitutes he sleeps with (five a week!), and the laws he breaks. Then we flash back to 1987, where, on his very first day of work, the younger version of Belfort (who looks the same as the older version) is taken out to lunch by his boss (Matthew McConaughey). The boss tells him two things: first, the goal is not to help clients, but to earn commissions; second, Jordan should masturbate more. Virtually every character in this movie is like this. No one pretends to have ethics, or inhibitions. Everyone curses, to the point where it seems unnatural. But the market is about to crash, and soon Belfort is out of a job.

So he settles for selling penny stocks out of an office on Long Island. An early scene has him, overdressed in a slick suit, delivering a silver-tongued stream of bullshit that leaves his motley coworkers slack-jawed, his target begging to invest, and, I think, the moviegoer quite entertained. Already, however, the rest of the story — the formation of his own brokerage, the wealth that quickly follows, the big house, the expensive car, the cheating (in every sense) — can be anticipated. As a character, Belfort is nearly fully formed. Unlike, say, Goodfellas, the plot moves quickly from struggle to excess. With a dorky-looking Jonah Hill as his equally amoral second-in-command, he trains a small army of white males to deliver similar spiels to the wealthy. Cue montages of vulgarity-laden speeches, strippers in the office, etc. Only vague threats of an FBI investigation and, one presumes, STDs, threaten conflict. The movie is also different from Oliver Stone’s Wall Street, still probably the most famous movie about the financial industry, although at one point another character compares Belfort to Wall Street’s anti-hero, Gordon Gekko. Gekko, of course, is famous for the line, “Greed is good.” One gets the feeling here than Belfort has not even thought about the question. In his cinematic incarnation, he is a man of drive and desire, and nothing more.

What makes Gekko into an archetype is not simply saying it, but meaning it. We see how he justifies what others see as villainy. I think every powerful person needs such an internal justification. Without that element, this story feels empty. Certainly, Scorsese tells it with panache, and he and screenwriter Terence Winter, whose credits include numerous episodes of Boardwalk Empire and The Sopranos, give the movie a lighter, more comedic tone than I’d expected. I would almost call the movie a comedy, except that it’s three hours, and it’s not funny for three hours. (The comedic centerpiece, in which Belfort battles some vintage Quaaludes, is a ten-minute sequence that’s funny for five.) When Belfort has a worthy adversary, like the FBI agent played by Kyle Chandler, or, in a couple of scenes, his wife (Margot Robbie), it’s at its best. But, as for the rest, even if there’s no one better at depicting vulgar, misogynistic excess than Scorsese, the excess is…excessive.

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viewed 1/2/14 6:30 pm and posted 1/7/14

The Pursuit of Happyness (***3/4)

 ? Will Smith plays Christopher Gardner, a salesman trying to stay afloat and take advantage of opportunity, in the early 1980s. Italian director Gabriele Muccino (whose Last Kiss was remade this year) makes his English-language debut with a script by Steve Conrad (The Weather Man).

+ I figured I’d like this movie when Gardner tells a janitor that the inspiring slogan on the wall outside his son’s day-care facility is misspelled (hence this film’s title). Only then does he mention the four-letter graffito someone added. Thanks to such details, this is a true story that actually feels like one. With a minimum of melodrama, it gives a picture of how tough it is to dig yourself out from a financial hole without a support system, and without shortcuts. Yeah, the movie’s a feel-good story, but if you look at how hard Gardner had to work to get ahead, and how smart he had to be, you can understand why so many people who are not lazy and not stupid can’t do what he did. The bone-density scanners Gardner carries around for much of the film provide both a running sight gag and a metaphor for the weight of the past mistakes he’s trying to overcome. The movie this reminded me of was the underrated Cinderella Man. Although that was about Depression-era boxer Jim Braddock, it was the other fairly recent movie that made me feel something of what it must be like to have to worry about every dollar, and the indignity of not being able to shield your family from the effects of that day-to-day struggle. Smith, in what might be his first regular-guy film role since Made in America, tones down but maintains his on-screen affability. Smith’s son Jaden plays the same role in the movie; he’s a natural.

- I guess if I wanted to criticize this I could say that whereas Cinderella Man used Braddock’s story as a window into Depression-era America, this doesn’t use do anything but show one man’s unlikely path to success. I could say that the movie falsely implies that anyone can make it by hard work and fortitude, whereas in reality Gardner also had a great deal of innate intelligence that also made that possible. I could say that it’s a movie about a poor black guy trying to make it in corporate America that nonetheless has nothing to say about the intersection of race and poverty. But if this isn’t a movie of great social import, it is well-paced, moving, and consistently entertaining.

= ***3/4 I found this Pursuit absorbing from beginning to end.

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A Good Year (**3/4)

? London’s top stock trader (Russell Crowe), having unexpectedly inherited a French vineyard from the uncle who raised him, learns the joys of simple living and loving. Roughly, it’s Jerry McGuire crossed with Under the Tuscan Sun, as directed by Ridley Scott, who also directed Crowe in Gladiator. The script was adapted from Peter Mayle’s novel by the guy whose previous credit is the fluffy romantic comedy Serendipity.

+ The movie has a laid-back vibe that, along with nice scenery, mostly made it pleasant to watch. It was mostly free of the corny moments and overbroad supporting characters that made Under the Tuscan Sun seem too much like a bad sitcom set in a Busch Gardens version of Europe, although the hero does “meet cute” with the love interest (Marion Cotillard)—he nearly runs her over with his car. The flashback scenes, with Albert Finney playing the uncle, are well done, and I also liked the ones with Archie Panjabi (who’s a woman) as the faithful assistant back in London.

- It’s always tough to show a character changing and make it believable. I wasn’t convinced that Crowe’s character was, after a week in the country, a lecture from an unexpected visitor, and a look at the local hottie, ready to chuck it all, or to regard the aforementioned beauty as someone different from the succession of brief relationships he’s apparently had in England. Even those flashbacks, which curiously all seem to take place the same summer, reveal a boy who was smart but already a cheater (at chess) and a sore loser. Why is he going to change?

= **3/4 Diverting but superficial. The romantic aspects aren’t emphasized enough to call this a romance, and there aren’t enough existential aspects to call it deep.

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