Wolf of Wall Street comes out tomorrow on Christmas day. The film is a biographical drama based on the autobiography of Jordan Belfort, former Wall Street stockbroker and ex-convicted white collar felon. The story follows his rise to wealth and success and his subsequent psychological and social alienation upon public discovery of his deceit.
This should be a movie to look forward to. Hollywood has not released many films about Wall Street since the housing crisis–the finance world is particularly ripe with moral dilemmas to consider, and these dilemmas are more relevant than ever before because actions taken in Wall Street have affected lives across not only the US, but the entire world since the early 2000’s in particular. The film also has a lot of big names involved in the production team–director Martin Scorsese has made multiple films ranked by many critics as some of the greatest of all time (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, the Departed), writer Terence Winter worked on landmark television drama the Sopranos and created the critically successful Boardwalk Empire, and lead actor Leonardo DiCaprio has received multiple Oscar nominations for his acting (Blood Diamond, The Aviator, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape). These three have also collaborated before–Scorsese and DiCaprio for the Departed and Shutter Island, and Scorsese and Winter on a handful of episodes for Boardwalk Empire.
This won’t be Scorsese’s first biographical drama–Raging Bull and Goodfellas set the bar pretty high, as both films are often ranked as some of the most influential films of all time. If The Wolf of Wall Street garners similar critical acclaim, Scorsese will extend his record of at least one critical success a decade across a span of 5 decades (1970’s through 2010’s). That’s more than twice as long as most of us have been alive. What am I even doing with my life? Watching this movie I guess.
